LSE Fellow Francesca Klug sheds light on “Left”

The Left’s critique of State power can sometimes sound selective and inconsistent.

Sometimes the few need protection from the many.

Text excerpting, further editing and notes for Today’s Insight News by Carolyn Bennett

…We should not underestimate the influence of an intellectual tradition that never really saw the problem with the State — provided the State was in the Right or, rather, the Left hands.

Evidence of a see no evil-hear no evil approach to the torture techniques used by some of our allies was shameful but sometimes all it would have taken was greater regulation and a more stringent commitment to the presumption of innocence to avoid charges of authoritarianism. The purpose of the Left, post-Marx, was not so much to change the State but to control it … Yet eighteenth century radical liberals routinely discussed the nature of political power in a democracy and measures necessary to keep in check the oppressive and centralizing tendencies of the State.

A tradition set aside [or insufficiently progressive], however, need not be lost forever. One of the reasons a rich seam of liberal egalitarian thought ─ from the Levellers to Thomas Paine through the Chartists ─ has been dismissed so lightly by socialists over the decades is that it was associated with a liberalism antithetical to the State in principle and hostile or indifferent to its potential to address inequality.

Clearly there has been a long and principled tradition of the Left, regardless of which party was in power, defending civil liberties — campaigning against successive Prevention of Terrorism Acts, miscarriage of justice and restrictions on protest. However, unlike right-wing libertarians, the Left’s critique of State power can sometimes sound selective and inconsistent, based on opposition to particular laws rather than a coherent analysis and set of principles about State power.

If it does not tread carefully, a movement that stands for the many, not the few can confuse populism with democracy. Sometimes the few need protection from the many. Ethical leadership from a movement driven by liberal egalitarian values could provide this protection.

Francesca Klug is Professorial Research Fellow at the London School of Economics.

Sources and notes
“Why has the left become so illiberal?” Compass conference 2010, an edited version of a speech by Francesca Klug at the Index on Censorship Event. Francesca Klug is Professorial Research Fellow at the London School of Economics, http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2010/06/francesca-klug-left-liberal/
Also http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/francesca-klug/why-has-left-become-so-illiberal
Karl Heinrich Marx (b. Trier, Rhine province, Prussia [Germany], May 5, 1818 – d. London, March 14, 1883) was a sociologist, historian, and economist. With Friedrich Engels, he published Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848) commonly known as The Communist Manifesto and the most celebrated pamphlet in the history of the socialist movement. He also authored Das Kapital. These writings and others by Marx and Engels form the basis of the body of thought and belief known as Marxism.
The Leveler movement originated in 1645–46 (England) and advocated a program of economic reform in the interests of small property holders. Included were complete equality before the law, abolition of trading monopolies, reopening enclosed land, security of land tenure for copyholders, no conscription or billeting, drastic law reform, the abolition of tithes, complete freedom of religious worship and organization.
Chartism aimed at parliamentary reform and took its name from the People’s Charter (London May 1836) of six points including annual parliaments; universal male suffrage; the ballot; no property qualifications for members of Parliament; payment of members; and equal electoral districts. Behind the political demands was fierce social discontent. The movement drew on an array of working-class grievances and extended working-class consciousness as it grew.
Thomas Paine (b. Thetford, Norfolk, England, January 29, 1737-d. New York, N.Y.- U.S. June 8, 1809), English-American writer and political pamphleteer. Papers “Common Sense” and “Crisis” papers were important influences on the American Revolution. Other works included the Rights of Man and the Age of Reason. Born of a Quaker father and an Anglican mother, Paine had little formal education but “enough to master reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
Egalitarianism (1905) is “a belief in human equality esp. with respect to social, political, and economic rights and privileges; a social philosophy advocating the removal of inequalities among people.”
Britannica references