Concepts of Agency on the Left and Right

The concept of moral agency and freedom of the will plays a significant role in the political realm, and individuals’ political affiliation, although it is not typically considered as such. For our purposes here, I will assume that the philosophical theory of causal determinism is not true, and humans have free will of some kind. With that being said, much of the economic debate between those on the right today endorsing in general a free market “laissez faire” system, and those on the left, who support greater government regulation, I seek to argue in this post, is a disguised debate over differing concepts of agency. This dichotomy can also be seen as one which splits classical liberalism in two: between supply-siders (today called economic neoliberals) and welfare, Keynesian opposition. While both camps would agree the maximization of freedom is the essential goal in the polity, they disagree over the meaning of this objective and how to meet it. Neoliberals tend to believe in only a conception of “negative” freedom, which is freedom from government restraint. Conversely, welfare liberals tend to believe in “positive freedom” in that individuals are actually open to more possibilities to exert their true potential and conception of the good with the government’s aid.

Implicit in this debate is two very different characterizations of human nature and agency. Neoliberals, i.e. advocates of the economic policy of Reagan and Bush, rely on a conception of the person as not only autonomous, but utterly removed from any environmental constraints. That is, it is a conception of agency in which individuals must be said to be completely liable for their situation regardless of any extenuating circumstances. This concept of a pure, autonomous agent therefore holds individuals responsible for both the economic rewards they are said to earn as well as any plight they find themselves in. This indeed is the general attitude of the neoliberal or libertarian who can turn their back and say “It is their own indolence and poor behavior which resulted in their economic poverty” and there will be no government handouts. This view implies responsibility.

But this type of conception of agency, I argue, is the product of fallacious reasoning. Welfare liberals, traditional today on the left, recognize that such a conception of pure autonomy belies the fact that we are always somewhat the product of circumstance and the environment in which we were raised. We cannot therefore hold someone liable for such circumstances. This is shown by the simple fact that class mobility is relatively limited, those in the lower economic bracket are at a huge disadvantage in terms of the best education prospects which can be crucial to breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty.

Rawls recognizes that we are the product of such circumstantial factors in terms of moral desert. In general we cannot be said to deserve are native endowments, nor can we be said to be entitled that society values our particular endowments. For instance, the fact that someone is naturally tall and good at basketball does not mean that he deserves to be tall or, moreover, that the game of basketball even be in existence. (Perhaps society had created another game in which the natural attribute of being short, yet fleet-footed gained an advantage) Rawls states incredulously, “Do people think than they deserved to be born more gifted than others?” (Justice as Fairness, 74) Consider all the things we do not choose: Our economic class, our sex, our general physical attributes, our intellectual aptitude, the schooling we received, the nation in which we were born, our religion until we are old enough to question it, and so on. (It is indeed ironic that Rawls recognizes that we cannot be said to deserve such things in terms of economic distribution, but he does not find us to be situated, constitutive selves as Sandel would have it)

Thus, the fact that such things are not earned all the way down should lead to what I believe should be more significant, structured government programs to help alter the environment in which individuals in lower economic brackets are raised in order to ensure that they have the same opportunities as any other individual within society. If one admits that persons are not completely autonomous agents, and although there is room for the will, this is greatly influenced by environmental factors, then I argue this is logical. With such recognition, the persistence of such pure neoliberal and libertarian economic policies in the United States in the last Bush administration can be said to be nothing more than callousness. It is a system which praises short-term efficiency for the wealthy over long-term social justice and equal opportunity, a system which increases the growing divide between the rich and the poor, and currently an economic system which, due its rampant deregulation, is in crisis.