The End of the Rawlsian Atlantic?

For Europeans, when not seen as a Cold War hangover, Atlanticism has been associated with radical centrism. One of the characteristics of Third Way politics in the Labour Party, for example, was an ambition to model Labour on the Democrats in the US. Radical centrism has almost disappeared from political life and so it is tempting to pass it off as an ephemeral phenomenon that bore no theoretical weight, and if anything got in the way of a more insightful understanding of the challenges that face the mature democracies. My own view is that its disappearance is a sign of something more serious. While the formulations of the political elites that adhered to the “third way” were often laughably thin the underlying inspiration was much more important. While I could never prove this, and so this is in a blog and not in a paper, my perception is that there was a very strong connection between debates around Rawls and ideas of a radical centre. Not that all adherents to the radical centrist politics were Rawlsians, far from it, but the Rawlsian agenda set the terms for radical centrism. In the moment in which we find ourselves arguments organised around the view that collective action problems should, ideally, be solved by individuals following procedural norms are not right or wrong, but just irrelevant. Does anyone really believe that some kind of clever cap and trade system is really going to solve the global warming crisis? So the retreat of the radical centre is a sign of a retreat of a very important wing of liberalism. But given how important that nexus was to the cohesion of the liberal Atlantic this is a real problem.

Humanities in the Universities

When I'm teaching Atlantic history one of the things I try to get students to watch out for are false parallels so it may well be that questions are being raised about the role of the humanities on both sides of the Atlantic entirely coincidentally, but I suspect not. My heretical suspicion is that this crisis may easily be resolved because we in fact know how to teach the humanities successfully and even cheaply. The problem is we can't do it within current university structures and within current assumptions about academic careers.

We worked out how to teach the humanities in the twelfth century. Small self-governing colleges have no to low overheads, a tight fit between student demand and teaching capacity without any need for oversight bureaucracies, and generate intense commitment. They integrate teaching and scholarship, or, if you prefer, research, so tightly that one cannot separate one from the other. And there is the rub. Academic careers are research careers and since the late nineteenth century the model for the university researcher has been the research scientist. The kinds of institutions that foster truly excellent scientific research are very different to colleges. We have muddled along for a good century and a half with the tension, but under pressure of rising educational costs and new social demands on the university the strains are telling.

The opportunity here is for a treaty of secession, or a series of them in various kinds of institutions, between the various elements of the university to be negotiated that helped all the elements of the current multiversity more sharply define their role and function. Unbundling the various kinds of knowledge that cohabit in our universities would undermine ways in which we now support one another. We might even suspect that casting off Classics, English, History and Philosophy from the fleets of battleships in the sciences would condemn the humanities to founder. Self-sustaining colleges would also face the challenge of resurrecting a liberal arts heritage that wasn't a total anachronism. Defining a humanities curriculum that speaks in a contemporary idiom would be a difficult task. These problems, and many more, already challenge the humanities, in or out of the current university system. But, on the other hand, if we actually attempted to identify the intellectual heritage of free men and women, and then taught it, I don't think we would lack for students.

The Shadow of Weimar

Kevin O'Rourke links to a really depressing piece by Barry Eichengreen.

http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2010/12/01/barry-eichengreen-on-the-irish-bailout/#more-8831

I find Eichengreen's reading of the economics highly compelling, but the political options he lays out are not comprehensive. The nature of the political challenge facing the US and Europe is becoming more clear every day. We have to organise an international response that can control and limit bond markets or we will end up living in increasingly fragile societies continually vulnerable to economic shocks. To get to a political resolution we will need to work our way past some of what we think we learned from twentieth century history. We thought we learned that rights claims were more important than active citizenship, and that maintaining monetary stability was crucial to sustaining political stability. To dig our way out of debt bondage we will need to generate an international political movement that uses the legitimacy derived from democratic politics to revalue debt (in effect political rights will have to trump property rights). This will massively change the distribution of wealth by devaluing every asset in existence. How do we all feel about a world where what we earn has a greater effect on our wealth than what we own, including our house?