Georgina Downer reviews Alexander Lefebvre’s Liberalism as a way of life, (NewSouth, 2024)
The term ‘liberal’ is likely to inspire admiration or loathing depending on the company you keep. It’s also likely to be understood differently by everyone you ask. The definition eludes us; there are national distinctions such as the differences between North American liberalism, English liberalism and of course our more familiar Australian liberalism. There are those who profess to own it, as the Australian Liberal Party does, despite advocating for policies that don’t always live up to the moniker.
In Alexander Lefebvre’s Liberalism as a Way of Life, defining the liberalism for which he advocates sets the tone for the book. Lefebvre is a Canadian political philosopher working as a professor at the University of Sydney. Despite his current situation, this book is written for a North American audience with cultural references and a definition of liberalism attuned to their understanding of it.
Lefebvre acknowledges that the definition of liberalism is contested, and he devotes a chapter to this question. The definition he uses – drawn from the works of American philosopher John Rawls – is decidedly social democratic. This isn’t a book about the definition, however, so while acknowledging the debate, he puts it to one side and proceeds on the basis that liberalism is a worldview where (quoting Rawls) ‘society should be conceived of and run as a fair system of cooperation.’
Lefebvre uses Rawls’s book, A Theory of Justice, to frame the book. Liberalism is not merely a social, political, or economic philosophy, but rather an entire way of living. In a secular age, liberalism can provide one with a spiritual orientation, guiding us to live with ‘purity of heart, grace, self-command’.
For an Australian liberal, Lefebvre’s book presents something of a challenge. Australian liberalism has charted an unsteady course through our history. Today I would argue it approximates to a sense of the ‘fair go’ for all, equality of opportunity, egalitarianism and small government.
The father of modern Australian liberalism and Australia’s longest-serving prime minister, Robert Menzies, drew his ideas from the works of John Locke, John Stuart Mill and William Gladstone, among others. His liberalism was one of political and economic rights and freedoms, and moral responsibilities. Liberal democracy was the foundation for a liberal life for the ‘forgotten people’ or the middle-class Australians that Menzies appealed to. These were the ‘salary-earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers’, people who valued thrift, ambition, education and their family and who weren’t part of organised labour or big business.
Menzies decried what he saw as the greediness of unregulated capitalism, arguing that it was best to ‘keep the good elements of the Capitalist system, while at the same time imposing upon Capital the most stringent obligations to discharge its social and industrial duty.’ Menzies believed that an individual owed a duty to others, asking not what society can do for oneself but what one can do for society.
Lefebvre’s book calls not just for a liberal society, but for a way to live a liberal life. As well as Rawls, the other hero of Lefebvre’s book is the French philosopher, Pierre Hadot. Hadot’s book, Philosophy as a Way of Life, inspires Lefebvre’s self-help approach throughout the book. Here, one’s commitment to liberalism as a way of life can be tested and refined through a series of ‘spiritual exercises’ based on Rawls’s thought experiments: the original position, reflective equilibrium and public reason. These exercises can help us modify our thinking and behaviour to avoid falling victim to the vices of modern life and liberal democracies, such as ‘partiality, cynicism, rage, meaningless, and an ugly sense of entitlement’.
The moral element of liberalism, or in Menzies’s view that sense of giving back to the community, is an important aspect of Australian liberalism. Judith Brett identified this in her book Australian Liberals and the moral middle class. But this liberal morality has always had a Judeo-Christian foundation to it. Liberalism gives one freedom to make moral choices while a dependence on the state does not. In Lefebvre’s view, liberalism can become a secular religion in and of itself, underpinning democracy. In a secular age, this could seem attractive and workable but without a higher sense of authority or morality how does his liberalism have a moral compass?
Lefebvre’s intention in writing this book is to provide guidance for those like him who are ‘liberal all the way down’, who live in ‘liberaldom’. ‘Liberaldom’ is the real world we live in or, as the author points out, our imperfect ‘pseudoliberal societies that publicly profess liberal commitments, yet fail and often do not even try to honor them.’
Much of the development of Australian liberalism came out of debates over the quality of our democracy and economy. Australian liberals of the 1800s argued in favour of universal manhood suffrage, free trade, religious pluralism, self-government, even in some cases going so far as to call for Australia to be carved up into independent republics. Liberalism’s cultural pull in the 19th and early 20th centuries encouraged many Australian politicians to call themselves liberal irrespective of whether their views were liberal or not.
While contradictions remained over who could rightly claim to represent Australian liberalism, when it came to Federation, the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia, its Constitution and system of checks and balances between the states and the Commonwealth and the three branches of government, liberalism won.
If our Constitution was liberal, the policies of our early governments were most definitely not, despite being supported by those purporting to be Liberal. The Australian Settlement—the set of policies which largely governed Australia’s national development for its first 60 years—were statist and protectionist and included the White Australia Policy, tariffs, and wage arbitration.
The end of the Australian Settlement and advent of the Hawke-Keating era in the 1980s brought with it liberal reforms including the dumping of protectionism and liberalisation of immigration. However, as historian Greg Melleuish has argued, the Hawke Labor Government was fundamentally social democratic, replacing the Deakinite ‘workfare state’ with a social democratic state.
The question over the amount of power society should hand over the state to achieve equality of outcome versus creating merely the conditions to achieve equality of opportunity seems to split those claiming the liberal mantle in the 21st century. For Lefebvre, using spiritual exercises can help root out privilege and bias but for an Australian liberal this will feel too much like identity politics.
Whether you agree with Lefebvre’s premise or not, Liberalism as a Way of Life presents the contemporary questions vexing those who try to live a good and liberal life in an imperfect world in an engaging and thought-provoking way. The fact that so many still claim the mantle of liberalism despite their differences presents a challenge to those who argue that liberalism has had its day. That is at least something to take heart from.
