D. G. Ritchie on socialism, history and Locke
2012; Routledge; Volume: 17; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13569317.2012.716615
ISSN1469-9613
Autores Tópico(s)Political Theory and Influence
ResumoAbstract The history of late-19th-century socialism tends to focus on the rise of more extreme forms, especially Marxism. This approach marginalizes the more moderate and yet no less powerful and influential forms of socialism, particularly those developed by philosophers who were also political activists. This article seeks to rectify this situation to some extent. Section two reconstructs Ritchie's liberal socialism and relates it to his endorsement of the Fabian policy of ‘permeation’. Section three develops this analysis by exploring Ritchie's claim that the philosophical historian should unlock past ideological configurations by using ‘critical metaphysics’ and ‘speculative metaphysics’ to analyse the gradual social ‘emanation’ of the higher principles of knowledge as those coalesced in the writings of ‘representative men’. Section four focuses on political theory, by reconstructing Ritchie's analysis of Locke's theory of private property and the liberal socialist intimations that Ritchie drew from it. It is concluded that while Ritchie's liberal socialism remains an underappreciated ideological position and his critical method remains controversial, both should retain interest for the intellectual historian. Acknowledgements I am pleased to thank the following for their comments on drafts of this article: Jim Connelly, Michael Freeden, Peter Nicholson, Tim Stanton, Dave Weinstein, the members of the PSA ‘Politics of Property’ and ‘British Idealism’ specialist groups, and both anonymous journal referees. The usual disclaimer applies. Notes 1. A tiny selection from this significant literature is: A. Simhony and D. Weinstein (Eds), The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberty and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); M. Dimova-Cookson and W. J. Mander (Eds), T.H. Green: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Political Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006); W. Sweet (Ed.), Bernard Bosanquet and the Legacy of British Idealism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 2. The following abbreviations are used to refer to Ritchie's writings: CD = ‘Civic duties and party politics’, in his Studies in Political and Social Ethics (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1902), pp. 66–107; CW = Collected Works, 6 vols. P. P. Nicholson (Ed.) (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1998); DP = Darwinism and Politics, 2nd edn (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1891); E = ‘Equality’, in Studies in Political and Social Ethics, pp. 30–42; HSC = ‘Contributions to the history of the social contract theory’, in his Darwin and Hegel (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1893), pp. 196–226; FWR = ‘Free will and responsibility’, in his Studies in Political and Social Ethics, pp. 200–238; LL = ‘Law and liberty: the question of state interference’, in his Studies in Political and Social Ethics, pp. 43–65; LTP = ‘Locke's theory of property’, in Darwin and Hegel, pp. 178–195; NR = Natural Rights (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1894); OCS = ‘On the conception of sovereignty’, in Darwin and Hegel, pp. 227–264; OV = ‘Origin and validity’, in Darwin and Hegel, pp. 1–31; PS = Philosophical Studies, Robert Latta (Ed.) (London: MacMillan, 1905); PSI = Principles of State Interference, 3rd edn (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1902); RH = ‘The rationality of history’, in Andrew Seth and R.B. Haldane (Eds), Essays in Philosophical Criticism (London: Longmans, Green 1883), pp. 126–157; RM = ‘The rights of minorities’, in Darwin and Hegel, pp. 265–285; SE = ‘Social evolution’, in his Studies in Political and Social Ethics, pp. 1–29; UV = ‘The ultimate value of social effort’, in Studies in Political and Social Ethics, pp. 177–199. 3. D. Boucher, The Limits of Ethics in International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon, 2009), pp. 226–239. On utilitarianism, see Colin Tyler, ‘Vindicating British idealism: David Ritchie contra David Weinstein’, Collingwood and British Idealism Studies, 15 (2009), pp. 54–75. 4. Peter Nicholson, ‘Introduction’, in D. G. Ritchie, Collected Works, 6 vols. P. P. Nicholson (Ed.) (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1998), Vol. 1, p. xxvii. 5. Nicholson, ibid., p. xxvii. 6. Freeden refers to Ritchie only as a liberal even if he was a liberal with some socialist sympathies, for example, Michael Freeden: The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), pp. 58–59, 65–66, 112–113; Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), pp. 197–198, 203–204, 239, 297–300, 428. David Weinstein, Utilitarianism and the New Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 156. 7. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for emphasizing this point to me. For a suggestive, related discussion of the context-dependent nature of ideological self-identification, see Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 27–46. 8. DP 57–58; Robert Latta, ‘Memoir’, in PS 41–42. See Sandra den Otter, British Idealism and Social Explanation: A Study in Late Victorian Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), pp. 111–119. This throws light on the dispute regarding Ritchie's distance from Green, and hence Green's contribution to British welfarism (Freeden, The New Liberalism, op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 57–59 and Colin Tyler, Civil Society, Capitalism and the State: Part 2 of The Liberal Socialism of Thomas Hill Green (Exeter/Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2012)). Ritchie's fundamental principles were Greenian even though Green never called himself a socialist: partly because the meaning of ‘socialism’ had changed since Green's death, and partly because Ritchie was more pessimistic about European capitalism. 9. Effectively Toynbee's address presented an overtly socialist rereading of T. H. Green, ‘Lecture on liberal legislation and freedom of contract’, in P. Harris and J. Morrow (Eds) Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 194–212. On Toynbee and Ritchie's personal, intellectual and political closeness, see Latta, ‘Memoir’, op. cit., Ref. 8, pp. 5–9 passim; Alon Kadish, Apostle Arnold: The Life and Death of Arnold Toynbee 1852–1883 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986), pp. 55, 64–65, 176, 223. 10. Arnold Toynbee (Ed.), ‘Are radicals socialists?’ [1882], in Toynbee's Industrial Revolution (Newton Abbot: David and Charles Reprints, [1884] 1969), pp. 207–208. 11. Toynbee, ibid., p. 208. 12. Toynbee, ibid., p. 210. 13. Toynbee, ibid., pp. 212–213. 14. Toynbee, ibid., p. 213. 15. Toynbee, ibid., pp. 213–215. 16. Toynbee, ibid., p. 216. 17. Toynbee, ibid., p. 216. 18. Toynbee, ibid., pp. 218–219. 19. Toynbee, ibid., p. 219. 20. Toynbee, ibid., p. 219. 21. Toynbee, ibid., p. 220. 22. See Alex Butterworth, The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents (London: Bodley Head, 2010); Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2010); Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (London: I.B. Tauris, [1996] 2010). 23. The socialist credentials of Ball, Ritchie and Toynbee were clearer than for many others. Sidney Ball called himself a ‘liberal socialist’ in ‘Socialism and individualism: a challenge and an eirenicon’, The Economic Review, VII (1897), pp. 491, 496, 515; as cited in Matt Carter, T.H. Green and the Development of Ethical Socialism (Exeter/Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2003), p. 145, see also Carter, ibid., pp. 11–12, 144–150. See also ‘As regards my own position in relation to Socialism, I am content to be a follower of Mill, from whom I learnt my first lessons in Socialism as well as in Liberalism. To my mind, Socialism is simply the economic complement of Liberalism’: Sidney Ball, ‘Individualism and socialism: II’, The Economic Review, 8(2) (1898), 234–235 (see pp. 229–235). See also Sidney Ball, ‘The socialist ideal’, The Economic Review, 9(4) (1899), pp. 425–449. The complexities of characterizing many of the other British idealists are explored insightfully in David Boucher and Andrew Vincent, A Radical Hegelian: The Political and Social Philosophy of Henry Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales, 1993), Chapter 6. For Jones as a possible ‘liberal socialist’, see Boucher and Vincent, ibid., p. 131. Also relevant is Colin Tyler, ‘The liberal Hegelianism of Edward Caird: or, how to transcend the social economics of Kant and the romantics’, The International Journal of Social Economics, 37(11) (October 2010), pp. 852–866. 24. ‘Socialism indeed means many things … [T]he article of faith common to them all [is]; that cooperation, not competition, is the true principle of social life … [I]n all cases … [the socialist's] ideal society is not one in which everybody is allowed to do what he likes so long as he inflicts no unquestionable injury upon his neighbours. Rather it is one in which each individual is expected by his private exertion to advance as well as he is able the positive welfare of his community.’ Francis Charles Montague, The Limits of Individual Liberty: An Essay (London: Rivingtons, 1885) pp. 7–8. 25. Tyler, ‘Vindicating British idealism’, op. cit., Ref. 3, pp. 64–73. 26. Ritchie seems to have seen female enfranchisement as something to work for vigorously (DP 62–75; NR 260–261). 27. These claims appear throughout Ritchie's writings. The following references are typical: unequal rights are evil (E 34–36), and compare the letter from Ritchie to an unknown correspondent, undated, quoted in Latta, ‘Memoir’, op. cit., Ref. 8, p. 41 and PS 335–339; unequal wealth (E 40); class (E 41); state to protect individual from coercive associations and businesses (LL 50–53, 57–58); censorship (LL 64–65); elementary education (LL 63–64); self-realization versus atomism (DP 75, PS 249–250, 297–302, 317–331); education (PS 247); ‘ordinary drudgery’ (PS 259). 28. For Bosanquet's attacks on socialism, see, for example, his 1890 paper to the Fabians: ‘The antithesis between Individualism and Socialism philosophically considered’, in his The Civilisation of Christendom and Other Studies (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1893), pp. 304–357, also v–vii. For Sidney Ball's response to Bosanquet's Charity Organization Society, see his The Moral Aspects of Socialism (Fabian Tract 72) (London: Fabian Society, 1896), pp. 17–19. See den Otter, British Idealism and Social Explanation, op. cit., Ref. 8, pp. 175–180; Alan M. McBriar, An Edwardian Mixed Doubles: The Bosanquets Versus The Webbs: A Study in British Social Policy 1890–1929 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987). 29. LL 53–54; CD 75–77. 30. The same might be claimed for T. H. Green, see Colin Tyler, The Metaphysics of Self-Realisation and Freedom: Part 1 of The Liberal Socialism of Thomas Hill Green (Exeter/Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2010), Chapter 1. On Ritchie, see also den Otter, British Idealism and Social Explanation, op. cit., Ref. 8, pp. 111–119. 31. Sidney Webb, ‘Socialism in England’, Publications of the American Economic Association, 4 (April 1889), p. 40. 32. Webb, ibid., p. 41. Sidney Webb cited Ritchie's Darwinism and Politics elsewhere as well, for example in his own ‘Historic’, in George B. Shaw (Ed.), Fabian Essays in Socialism (London: Fabian Society, 1889), p. 57n. 33. Edward R. Pease, The History of the Fabian Society (London: A.C. Fifield, 1916), p. 75. 34. DP iv–vi, 3, 9–10. See Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 197–198, 203–204. 35. See NR x. Reported in Fabian News, 1 (1891–1892), p. 38, cited in Nicholson, ‘Introduction’, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. x, n.10. 36. This comparison is indebted to the survey of Fabianism in Alan M. McBriar, Fabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), Chapter 3. 37. See McBriar, ibid., Chapter 9. 38. Fabian Society, ‘To your tents, oh Israel!’, Fortnightly Review, no. 323, n.s. (1 November 1893), pp. 569–589. See Nicholson's note at Ritchie, ‘Selected Letters’, in CW 11n18. 39. Letter from D. G. Ritchie to Edward Pease, 1–2 November 1893, in CW 13–14. 40. Letter from Ritchie to Pease, 31 October 1893, in CW 12. 41. Letter from Ritchie to Pease, 31 October 1893, in CW 12. 42. Norman MacKenzie, in Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Letters, 3 vols. N. MacKenzie (Ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), Vol. 2, pp. 10–11. ‘I had hoped that, with an occasional fling at official Liberalism—to please the gallery—the Society intended to continue its useful work of permeating Liberalism with Socialism i.e. making Liberals think about the day after tomorrow, as well as about tomorrow’ Letter from Ritchie to Pease, 31 October 1893, in CW 12. See Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie, The First Fabians (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), pp. 203–206. 43. Pease, The History of the Fabian Society, op. cit., Ref. 33, p. 116. 44. RH 158. Lassalle's position ignored developments in ‘English Liberalism’ including Green's rejection of ‘the negative formula of “freedom of contract”’ (RH 158n2). 45. Boucher, The Limits of Ethics in International Relations, op. cit., Ref. 3, p. 226. On Spencer, see PSI Chapters 1 and 2. NR Chapter 3, 53n, 58, 60, 68, 269. In a recently published letter to Sidgwick, in addition to analysing the ‘American and French Declarations of Rights’, Ritchie wrote ‘In treating of the idea of “natural rights” as “an element of current thought”, I have thought it quite as important to deal with popular writers (e.g. Henry George) as with an expositor of the Lex Naturalis like Father Rickaby or of the doctrine of Naturrecht like Prof Lorimer or of his own special view like Mr. Spencer's’ Letter from Ritchie to Henry Sidgwick, 12 July 1895, in Colin Tyler (Ed.), Unpublished Manuscripts in British Idealism, 2 vols. (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2008), Vol. 1, p. 244. 46. NR 6; see also NR 173–176, 184–186. Answering Sidgwick's Mind critical notice privately, Ritchie explained that ‘I do not say that the theory cannot be traced farther back also’, before briefly discussing earlier sources. Letter from Ritchie to Sidgwick, 12 July 1895, in Tyler, Unpublished Manuscripts in British Idealism, op. cit., Ref. 45, Vol. 1, p. 244. 47. NR 39, 239. Weinstein argues that Ritchie misunderstood Spencer (Weinstein, Utilitarianism and the New Liberalism, op. cit., Ref. 6, pp. 149–156). 48. On Herbert, see Boucher, The Limits of Ethics in International Relations, op. cit., Ref. 3, pp. 226, 230. 49. RH 132; see also RH 128–129. 50. See RH 134–135, 147–148, 157. Compare G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 9 and Colin Tyler, Idealist Political Philosophy: Pluralism and Conflict in the Absolute Idealist Tradition (London/New York: Continuum, 2006), pp. 6–16. 51. RH 127, 136. This same attitude underpins the best contemporary Locke scholarship: see, for example, James Tully, A Discourse on Property (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) and Timothy Stanton, ‘Authority and freedom in the interpretation of Locke's political theory’, Political Theory, 39 (2011), pp. 6–30. 52. The following reading is defended at greatest depth in Tyler, ‘Vindicating British idealism’, op. cit., Ref. 3. 53. DP 106; see also DP 99–101. See Weinstein, Utilitarianism and the New Liberalism, op. cit., Ref. 6, Chapter 5 passim. 54. RH 137. ‘Savonarola, Wycliffe, Huss, may be as interesting personages as Luther, but they were “before their time,” and it is in him that the spirit of the age—at least one great element of it—became incarnate; he is the symbol of the whole movement’ (RH 138). 55. ‘And when we are looking at things fairly, and not in some cynical mood, we do judge everything by the highest type of it. We do not suppose every Athenian to have been a Pericles or Phidias, every old Florentine a Dante or a Giotto, yet we take these great men as the types of their people’ (RH 147). 56. OV 14. See further Tyler, The Metaphysics of Self-Realisation and Freedom, op. cit., Ref. 30, especially pp. 49–55. Compare R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940), Chapters 3–7. For a different perspective, see Darin R. Nesbitt, ‘D.G. Ritchie's ethics’, in W. Sweet (Ed.) The Moral, Social and Political Philosophy of the British Idealists (Exeter/Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2009), pp. 70–74. 57. See Harold H. Joachim, The Nature of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), pp. 85–121. 58. Ritchie's reading of Locke remained consistent throughout his published writings, except for his reading of the stages of the social contract, which is not directly relevant to the current argument. See his letter to Henry Sidgwick, 12 July 1895, in Tyler, Unpublished Manuscripts in British Idealism, op. cit., Ref. 45, Vol. 1, pp. 244–245. 59. John Locke, ‘Second Treatise’, in his Treatises on Government, P. Laslett (Ed.), 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), §6. 60. LTP 190; see Locke, ibid., §43. 61. Tully, A Discourse on Property, op. cit., Ref. 51, p. 145. 62. LTP 179; Locke, ‘Second Treatise’, op. cit., Ref. 59, §28. 63. That Ritchie's argument is neither outdated nor naïve is indicated by the fact that one finds it iterated in Will Hutton, Them and Us (London: Little, Brown, 2010), p. 220. Hutton credits this idea to L. T. Hobhouse (ibid., pp. 219–220, 222, 234–235, 261, 266). 64. Locke, ‘Second Treatise’, op. cit., Ref. 59, §§38, 45. 65. Locke, ibid., §50. 66. LTP 182, quoting Locke, ‘Second Treatise’, op. cit., Ref. 59, §95. 67. LTP 180, quoting Locke, ‘Second Treatise’, op. cit., Ref. 59, §30. 68. Ritchie cites H. R. Fox Bourne, Life of John Locke, 2 vols. (London: Henry S. King, 1876) at several points in Natural Rights (NR 6n, 12n, 91n, 154n) and Green (‘Preface’ to his Darwin and Hegel (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1891), pp. vi–vii; HCS 218). For Ritchie's scholarly care, see LTP 182n1, J. K. Bluntschli, The Theory of the State, trans. D. G. Ritchie, P. E. Matheson and R. Lodge, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1895), pp. 276–277, n. a, and letter to Sidgwick, 12 July 1895, in Tyler, Unpublished Manuscripts in British Idealism, op. cit., Ref. 45, pp. 243–247. 69. Locke, ‘Second Treatise’, op. cit., Ref. 59, §3; LTP 192–193; OCS 215, 216. 70. Locke, ‘Second Treatise’, op. cit., Ref. 59, §6. 71. NR 6, citing Bourne, Life of John Locke, op. cit., Ref. 68, Vol. 2, p. 166. See also NR 14. On Locke's rhetoric, see HSC 212.
Referência(s)