Possessive Individualism and the Domestic Liberal Roots of International Political Theory

Criticisms of realism and liberalism, traditionally the two dominant fields within international relations (IR) and international political economy (IPE) theory, have been widespread for the past two decades. What unites these critical theorists is their claim that IR/IPE theory is both ahistorical and decontextualised. What is missing from this critical account is a sustained historical examination of liberal ontology at the domestic level and how it relates to current mainstream IR/IPE theory construction. This paper will provide an overview of the basic assumptions, goals and insights of C.B. Macpherson’s possessive individualist model and its relevance to the study of international politics. Its main hypothesis is that Macpherson’s critique of the possessive individualist core of liberalism is equally valid at an international level of analysis because assumptions about the role of the individual, the state, and human nature within IR/IPE theory have been ontologically transferred to the international level in possessive individualist terms. The possessive individualist ethos is an identity that imbues intersubjective norms and values upon individuals, institutions and states. Through social iteration, states have embodied these liberal norms, values, and identities that entrench competition, hierarchy and inequality. IR/IPE theory, which draws its core assumptions from this liberal discourse, benefits from including Macphersonian insights because insufficient attention has been paid to the historical and ideological development of the liberal worldview, its effects upon the conceptualisation of international politics, and how this pervasive worldview inhibits potential alternatives. This leads to a discussion of the model’s potential applicability in furthering a critical research programme of other areas of liberal capitalist modernity. C.B. Macpherson & Possessive Individualism: Applications for the Study of IR and IPE Theory Criticisms of realism and liberalism, traditionally the two dominant fields within international relations (IR) and international political economy (IPE) theory, have been widespread for the past two decades. These criticisms come from several fronts including feminists, post-modernists, poststructuralists, Marxists, and critical constructivists. What unites these critical theorists is their claim that IR/IPE theory is both ahistorical and decontextualised. Mainstream IR/IPE theory is depicted as an ongoing self-referential discourse within an existing domestic liberal ontology; however, there seems to be little attention paid to this fact by realists and liberals alike. Models of international politics are fashioned upon a priori claims about the essential nature of human beings in regards to drives, needs and goals. In doing so, these claims purport to explain the “observable.” What is missing from this critical account is a sustained historical examination of liberal ontology at the domestic level and how it relates to current mainstream IR/IPE theory construction. Realists and liberals do not merely resist insights from other critical perspectives because of their previous normative commitments (obviously this is the case), but this resistance is primarily due to the ingrained core identity of possessive individualism that C.B. Macpherson first identified in his seminal work The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. This paper will provide an overview of the basic assumptions, goals and insights of Macpherson’s model and its relevance to the study of international politics. Its main hypothesis is that Macpherson’s critique of the possessive individualist core of liberalism is equally valid at an international level of analysis because assumptions about the role of the individual, the state, and human nature held domestically have been ontologically transferred to the international level in possessive individualist terms within IR/IPE theory. Macpherson argued that liberalism posited the individual as “the proprietor of his 1 For the purposes of this paper, the abbreviations (IR) and (IPE) will be used throughout for international relations theory and international political economy theory respectively. 2 The selfreferential nature has been pointed out by several critical scholars including Robert Cox Production, power, and world order: social forces in the making of history (1987) Political economy of a plural world : globalization and civilization (2002); James Der Derian, Virtuous war: mapping the military-industrial-media-entertainment network (2001); Jim George Discourses of global politics: a critical (re)introduction to international relations (1994); V. Spike Peterson, Anne Sisson Runyan Global gender issues (1992); RBJ Walker Inside/outside: international relations as political theory (1993) among others. More importantly, this claim is evident in the works of many prominent realist and liberal scholars. For realist scholars see John J. Mearsheimer, “The Future of the American Pacifier” in Foreign Affairs Vol. 80 No.5 Sept/Oct 2001 pp 4661; Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: the struggle for power and peace (1973); Kenneth N. Waltz Theory of International Politics (1979), “The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory” Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 18, Issue 4 (Spring 1988). pp. 615-628, and “Structural Realism after the Cold War” International Security Vol. 25 No. 1 (Summer 2000) pp. 5-41. For liberal scholars see Francis Fukuyama “The End of History?” The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989) pp.3-18, “Reflection on the End of History, Five Years Later” History and Theory Volume 34 Issue 2 Theme Issue 34: World Historians and Their Critics (May 1995), pp.27-43, “Their Target: The Modern World” Newsweek Vol. 138 Issue 25, 12/17/2001 pg.42-48, “The west has won. Radical Islam can't beat democracy and capitalism. We're still at the end of history Guardian Thursday, Oct. 11, 2001 http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,567333,00.html; Robert O. Keohane “International Institutions: Can Interdependence Work?” Foreign Policy No. 110 Spring 1998 pp. 82-96, Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Power and Interdependence 3rd Edition. New York: Longman, 2001; Andrew Moravcsik “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics” in International Organization 51 4 (Autumn 1997) pp. 513-553; Kenneth A. Oye ed. Cooperation Under Anarchy (1986); W.W. Rostow The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960). 2 3 The claim that mainstream IR/IPE scholarship is self-referential is not revolutionary to those with a critical normative stance (e.g. Marxists, feminists, post-modernists etc.) towards capitalist modernity. For a discussion of how realism and liberalism are in the same “tradition” due to their acceptance of capitalist market relations, and of larger “sociology of knowledge” questions see Thomas J. Biersteker. “Evolving Perspectives on International Political Economy: Twentieth-Century Contexts and Discontinuities” in International Political Science Review Vol. 14, No. 1, 1993; Robert Cox “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Theory” in Millennium 10 2 1981 and Michael Mastanduno, “Economics and Security in Statecraft and Scholarship” in International Organization 52 4 Autumn 1988. own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them. The individual was seen neither as a moral whole, nor a part of a larger social whole, but an owner of himself.” Thus, this ontology inhibited the creation of a coherent theory of social obligation causing society to become a “lot of free equal individuals related to each other as proprietors of their own capacities and of what they have acquired by their exercise.” If a possessive individualist identity and ethos is evident domestically, this same worldview is what individual leaders, diplomats, and scholars draw from. Looking for “objective” patterns and laws has only obscured the social dimension of existing structures of power and inequality because this basic ontology or worldview is so embedded and thus unproblematic. Through social iteration, states have embodied these liberal norms, values, and identities that entrench competition, hierarchy and inequality. While realists and liberals discuss the problem of anarchy (i.e. the absence of world government/authority) which does present significant barriers for co-ordination and co-operation, the very concept of anarchy is problematic because it invokes implicit “state of nature” arguments and reifies the very thing they are observing and investigating. By adding Macphersonian insights to the existing critical IR/IPE literature, a more nuanced and detailed model emerges. For Macpherson, liberal conceptions of the nation-state help make up a system that “exists to uphold and enforce a certain kind of society, a certain set of relations between individuals, a certain set of rights and claims that people have on each other both directly, and indirectly through their rights to property.” This worldview forms the core of their study of states, institutions and conflict. Contrary to mainstream scholars, these possessive individualist, marketbased relations are neither normal nor permanent. They are the result of mutually constituted material and social forces developed historically. Therefore, in terms of international politics, anarchy is indeed “what states make of it” because ultimately people and states are not locked into permanent structures of thought, behaviour and identity. If an intersubjective culture is a key component in both domestic and international life, then only by inverting the ontology of human nature, from a given to one that is socially constructed, can a truer, “thicker” model of international politics emerge; thus, the discipline(s) of IR/IPE (and domestic political theory) would do well “to get rid of the concept of the state of nature and the theories based upon it.” Instead of looking for immutable patterns or structures in international relations over time, a better approach would be to examine the cultural context that drives these theories in the first place, thereby providing a better empirical model from which to work. Macpherson’s life project was to expose liberal theory’s link to capitalist market relations and by this recognition, begin the journey to transcend capitalism. Macpherson’s implicit cultural argument about the co-constitution of the ideological elements of liberalism and nascent European (British) capitalism can be linked with the constructivist turn in IR/IPE. The possessive individualist ethos is an identity that imbues intersubjective norms and values upon individuals, institutions and states. Using constructivist insights about the interplay between agents and the possessive individualist structures they interact within provides a fuller and more powerful 4 C.B. Macpherson. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke Oxford: Oxford UP, 1962 p.3 5 Macpherson Political Theory p.3 6 For an excellent historiography of modern Western political theory’s ontology of the “state of nature” see Beate Jahn The Cultural Construction of International Relations: the invention of the state of nature (2000). 7 C.B. Macpherson. The Real World of Democracy Concord: Anansi, 1992. p. 4 8 A central theme of Alexander Wendt’s work in IR constructivism is that anarchy is inter-subjectively shared by states as to its rules, norms or lack of them. He, unfortunately, does not go deeply enough and implicitly accepts the dominant liberal ontology although he investigates and theorises about it differently. This paper seeks to go beyond a new description of liberal political theory and begin a discussion of how deeply embedded liberal social practices are and what they mean for people and humanity as a whole. See Alexander Wendt “Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics” International Organization 46, 2 Spring 1992 pp. 391-425. 3 9 Jahn. Introduction xvi explanatory model. In turn, this helps synthesise and strengthen critical perspectives. In doing so, this paper is attempting to link Macpherson’s domestic model of the liberal tradition to the study of international politics and to the construction of IR/IPE theory in much the same way other critical scholars (e.g. Robert Cox, Stephen Gill et al.) have done with the writings of Antonio Gramsci. C.B. Macpherson: Life and Project Throughout his career, Macpherson argued that liberalism was a double system of power: one political and the other economic. Therefore, a central problem of liberal theory was its focus on negative liberty (i.e. freedom from) at the expense of material equality. The inability to recognise the historical development of capitalist social relations created, in his mind, an internal contradiction that had yet to be reconciled by liberals. Thus, liberalism would continue to be selfcontradictory until it recognised its possessive individualist core. Otherwise, liberalism merely legitimated an ongoing inequality and preventing individuals from meeting their full potential. The possessive individualist ethos is an entrenched and integral part of Western culture (and modernity). It permeates many, if not most, aspects of social, cultural and political life due to an ongoing process of liberal ideational socialization for the past three to four hundred years. For Macpherson, this process began with the rise of the liberal state, which developed as follows: Its essence was the system of alternate or multiple parties whereby governments could be held responsible to different sections of the class or classes that had a political voice. There was nothing necessarily democratic about the responsible party system. In the country of its origin, England, it was well established, and working well, half a century before the franchise became at all democratic. This is not surprising, for the job of the liberal state was to maintain and promote the liberal society, which was not essentially a democratic or an equal society. The job of the competitive party system was to uphold the competitive market society, by keeping the government responsive to the shifting majority interests of those running the market society. It is this sheer scope or scale of Macpherson’s vision, which explains why he remains critical to liberal theory and, by extension, to IR/IPE theory. His concern for individuals to have the requisite tools and resources available to develop themselves was for him, essential in achieving substantive and meaningful equality. He took his scholarship to be necessarily socially active; that is, to promote the realisation of a better, more just society. In this sense, it evokes Marx’s claim that “philosophers hitherto have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it”. At issue was the very nature of who we are as individuals and as a society. Thus, Macpherson’s goal was to include the social dimension of life within liberal theoretical discourse and helps explain why his possessive individualist model became a centrepiece for most of his writings throughout his career. However, there are numerous examples of “ethical thinkers” applying their ideas and work for social ends. What makes Macpherson unique? First, rather than writing off liberal theory as merely bourgeois ideology, he attempted the very difficult task of using liberal theory against itself to show how it failed to live up to its own values and principles. Thus, his “concept of possessive individualism was Marxist inspired...as was his ethical humanism, which was only superficially Millian.” Second, the attempted synthesis of liberalism and socialism, or the “retrieval” of liberalism, was to provide a basis for severing the liberal tradition from its capitalist 10 See Stephen Gill, ed. Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 11 Macpherson Real World of Democracy p.9 12 Karl Marx. Theses on Feuerbach XI (www.marxists.org) Viewed Sept 12 2003. 4 13 Jules Townshend. “C.B. Macpherson: Capitalism, Human Nature and Contemporary Democratic Theory” in Marxism’s Ethical Thinkers Ed. Lawrence Wilde New York: Palgrave, 2001 pp. 144-168 p. 144-45. envelope. Only by understanding why liberal capitalist democracy was so resilient could it eventually be replaced with a socio-political system that valued human creativity and development