The Nature Of Freedom (Cont'd.) Comments
Wolff, Robert Paul & Spitz, David
In our September-October issue we printed an article by David Spitz entitled "Pure Tolerance: A Critique of Criticisms." Its subject was A Critique of Pure Tolerance, a new book co-authored by...
...It is, we now realize, not enough to open the doors to opportunity...
...The welfare legislation sponsored by modern liberals runs directly contrary to Mill's prescriptions...
...About five-sixths of my discussion dealt with the remainder of his paper...
...If Professor Spitz will not discuss the essay I actually wrote, then the only way to foster a dialogue is for me to reply to his criticism as though I had written the essay he thinks I wrote...
...Pluralism, as I characterized it, is an outgrowth of twentieth-century attempts to fuse some of Mill's principles with conservative sociological doctrines originally opposed to the classical liberalism of On Liberty...
...Leaving aside a certain face-saving vagueness in the phrase "long run," this is again an empirical proposition (as is the claim that men will be happier knowing the truth...
...It is a specific social product, arising from certain forms of family structure, customs of child-rearing, institutions of education, and ethico-religious practices...
...He claims (with no conceivable utilitarian justification, by the way) that society has no right at all to interfere with the internal sphere, and that it may justly interfere with the outward actions only when protecting society from harm or when maximizing happiness...
...and such repetition simply ignores the very considerable literature that refutes it...
...A Comment by Michael Walzer and response by David Spitz appeared in our last issue...
...So it too can be subjected to some sort of empirical test...
...We must also teach the disadvantaged to want to walk through them...
...he now chooses to ignore this...
...I do not include academics...
...Let me mention three major challenges to Mill's teaching: 1. Mill's thesis is couched in terms of a distinction between the internal, or private, sphere of a man's life, and the external, or public, effects of his 96 actions...
...Mill was acute enough as an observer to appreciate the role of voluntary and other associations in industrial society, but he failed to realize how seriously their necessity undermined the foundations of his individualism...
...Mill's aim, as he states quite clearly, is to present a utilitarian defense of the proposition that "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action in any of their number, is self-protection...
...The institutional reflection of this process is the establishment of professional schools and licensing boards in the case of fields like social work and penology, and the transfer of decision-making from legislature to executive in the case of military strategy and (increasingly) economics...
...Below Robert Paul Wolff comments on the article, and David Spitz briefly replies...
...Now, it is at least an open question whether the psychological need for community can be satisfactorily met through entirely voluntary human relationships...
...In fact, as even the casual reader should be able to discern, it is an attack on something called "pluralism," which I go out of my way to explain is not the theory espoused by Mill...
...Durkheim, Tonnies, and many others have shown us the dangers that lie in formal, legal individualistic freedom unsupported by strong social bonds...
...I think that it does, and that in several important regards the evidence is against Mill...
...Such a claim is obviously empirical in nature, for it is a question of fact whether one policy produces more or less happiness than another...
...But so long as he pretends to a virginal neutrality, claiming merely to be defending "ground rules" of a purely formal sort, I must insist, as I did in my essay, that it is time to move beyond tolerance...
...He merely says that, in the long run, truth will flourish in an atmosphere of freedom...
...I appear to have provoked Spitz, but not in that direction...
...Our political institutions today functionally embody a certain theory of American democracy which is known as "pluralism...
...But this distinction between inner and outer, on which Mill's entire argument rests, cannot be maintained in the light of modern theories of the social origins of personality...
...In every society, some set of doctrines, some definition of significant problems and relevant solutions, is embodied in the political and economic institutions...
...But it is now a commonplace of social science that men need involvement in intermediate groups and local societies if they are to avoid the evils of anomie and rootlessness...
...Not even the most dogmatic libertarian would argue that quacks should get a "fair hearing" in our medical schools, or that the strict licensing of new doctors, now firmly controlled by the medical profession, 97 should be abandoned...
...So let us consider Mill's On Liberty and forget "Beyond Tolerance...
...For example, imagine what alterations would be required in our educational system and learned professions if the scientific method itself were to be treated as genuinely open to question...
...We may legitimately ask, therefore, whether the past century of social experience and sociological investigation throws any new light on Mill's thesis...
...If David Spitz will admit that the rules of tolerance favor the established ideas in our society, then we can have a fruitful argument about the real issue, which is the truth of those ideas...
...Mill is wrong in claiming that genuinely free debate can take place about all matters of importance to a society, and he is wrong in claiming that such debate, were it possible, would in the long run lead to the greatest good for the greatest number...
...To be sure, osteopaths and phrenologists may publish books and even, in some states, hang out shingles...
...The first thing to notice is that although virtually everybody subscribes to Mill's dictum, we all assent to its violation in practice...
...This was the burden of my essay...
...It is customary for liberals today to change their programs without bothering to reexamine their theoretical presuppositions...
...and a good teaching job somewhere...
...That theory is wrong as a description of American politics, and inadequate as a prescription...
...Its subject was A Critique of Pure Tolerance, a new book co-authored by Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, and Herbert Marcuse...
...Professor Spitz imagines that my essay is an attack on Mill...
...One of the points of my essay was to provoke such a reexamination...
...3. Mill's famous defense of freedom of speech is, as he insists, utilitarian through and through...
...This is the more regrettable since what 98 Wolff said then and says now concerning Mill is but a restatement of ancient doctrines elaborated at length in the writings of "liberal" and "radical" critics from James Fitzjames Stephen to Maurice Cowling and Willmoore Kendall...
...As economics, military strategy, social welfare, and penology come to be viewed as "scientific," there is a tendency to define them as matters of expertise rather than policy, and thus to remove them from the domain of public debate...
...The autonomous personality which Mill quite rightly admires is not the natural condition of the untyrranized man...
...he now chooses to ignore this too...
...Mandatory social security and old-age medical insurance violate the principle quoted above from On Liberty...
...In other words, Mill undertakes to show that the adoption of this principle as social policy will lead to the greatest possible happiness for the greatest number of people...
...Nearly a third of his essay dealt adversely with Mill...
...2. Mill writes as though individualism, even to the point of idiosyncrasy, were an adequate base for a healthy and stable political society...
...If it cannot, then there will be sound utilitarian arguments for legally strengthening certain social institutions (for example, by making it difficult to get a divorce), and encouraging others through governmental planning (by building public housing with large apartments in order to support the extended family, say...
...Even to grant the attack the status of a legitimate alternative would be to alter the society...
...If Wolff were to control the intellectual marketplace, where within his non-pluralistic, nontolerant system would dissenters from his views find an outlet for expression...
...So long as those underlying assumptions are not in question, something resembling "free debate" may perhaps be possible, but when the dispute goes to the very foundations of the existing order, institutional neutrality is not possible...
...I could hardly expect that a journal named DISSENT should review our little book favorably, but I assumed that it would choose a reviewer who could read...
...He does not say that men have an inalienable right to engage in free debate...
...The recognition of this fact lies behind the recent emphasis on family patterns in urban ghettos...
...One is hard put to take Professor Wolff seriously...
...In my experience, virtually any kind of nut can get a Ph.D...
...The doctrine of tolerance serves, in our society, as an ideological justification for the preservation of pluralist politics...
...The issue that should concern Wolff is this: how can we move "beyond tolerance," and still provide a forum for dissenting ideas...
...But it would be absurd to deny that they are systematically discriminated against and hence do not really get a change to present their case fairly to the public...
...Much the same can be said in the case of lawyers, architects, undertakers, and numerous other professionals...
...My interest in tolerance as a social ideal was explicitly restricted to its role as the virtue, or excellence, of a pluralist democracy...
Vol. 14 • January 1967 • No. 1
