Cross it out! (Weblog)

A whole book could be written arguing why someone should be left or right wing in modern society. So, instead, I will make a case for one basic leftist principle – one that is at the heart of the differences between it and conservatism.

It is perfectly acceptable for the government to take an active and substantial role in areas such as the provision of health care, the creation and maintenance of infrastructure, and some provision for the poor and disabled.

Now, a great many conservatives would have a problem with this. Such government programmes will tend to benefit some more than others, and are always funded disproportionately by the rich and well-off middle classes (even if everyone paid a flat percentage of income, the rich would still pay much more).

They effectively redistribute economic goods – but I do not intend to justify them on the grounds that they aim towards a particular ‘just’ distribution. In fact, I intend to bypass the issue of justice altogether.

Because if we concede the point that the rich people’s money is ‘theirs’, but then go on to ask what they should do with it, conservatives have little to say.

I suppose what they would say is: “Whatever they want”. But while apparently answering the question, this in fact waves it away. People are “entitled” to spend their money as they please – that is their right in a liberal society with a free market.

But, in asking what the rich should do with their money, we are really asking “what would it be best to spend it on?”

This does assume that you have a morality. With that assumption we can also say that some things are morally better than others.

Wouldn’t most people say that charity is right? Even if money is yours, if you are faced with spending £300 on a designer T-shirt or spending the same £300 on providing shelter for someone who is homeless for half a year, the latter is absolutely the right choice.

I’m assuming the existence of absolute morality and absolute right-or-wrong choices. Absolute morality is a fair assumption because most people do acknowledge right and wrong.

But if that’s the case, couldn’t it be the right choice for rich people to pay, along with smaller contributions from less wealthy members of society, for some basic goods? For instance, basic shelter for the homeless, a health-care safety net if people fall seriously ill and can’t afford vital operations, education, or the broadly shared public good of clean air?

This basic left-wing idea is correct, and should be believed in by everyone. So everyone, rich people included, ought to be voting for these government programmes for moral reasons.

The point I’m making is that the welfare state is simply the voluntary socialisation of charity, for purposes of increasing efficiency and evenly sharing the burden of paying for it (so that larger contributions come from those who can comfortably afford them). It would be exactly equivalent to voluntary private giving, if everyone voted for it.

Isn’t charitable giving right? Though I wouldn’t defend the superior efficiency of all forms of state action currently practiced, it clearly brings a huge boost in practicality in some cases. For example, few could doubt that if people wanted the benefits of law-and-order (who doesn’t?), common laws, courts and police are the only real option. Coordinated shelter for the homeless is, at least in theory, more effective because it allows comprehensive coverage and ensures everyone in need gets an equal share.

If everyone agreed on the moral rightness of certain goals, the state would simply be an avenue for agreed cooperation in the service of these goals. So we would spend on defence because it would bring everyone the obvious benefit of security.

Likewise, some sort of safety net would be provided by society simply because of the benefit it would (hopefully) bring to the poor or temporarily unfortunate - not because they have any inborn ‘entitlement’ or ‘claim’ on the rich, or could wave a fictitious social contract in their faces. And people who could more easily afford to do so would voluntarily pay for much of this simply because it is the right thing to do.

So what I’d like conservatives to answer is: if it is good to help people by choice, then isn’t it good to choose to vote for such public charity?

What this means is that public policy debates ought simply to concern what we can do for the best results and the least cost, tempered by any distinct moral concerns we might decide there are.

Standard left-wing answers may not be the best way to help people: for example, there is some evidence to show that overly-generous welfare systems tend to create ruts of poverty and dependence, and people actually do better after reform of these. But if the state, or charity, is the best, most effective way in which to do good, then why shouldn’t we go for it?

At this stage, conservatives tend to point to failed government programmes, as if this counted against the principle that we should engage in collective action when it works, rather than implicitly accepting it. At the very least, this suggests some confusion in their ideas.

What can conservatives who regard themselves as less confused say to defend the idea that the right thing to do in private choices (i.e. good) isn’t it the right decision to do in public choices? If you don’t feel that do-gooding deserves its name that’s a different matter, but most of us do.