Towards a Politics of Flourishing: A Conversation with Adrian Pabst

Our conversation with political theorist Adrian Pabst on our current politics, new forms of progressivism, and who we are.

Photo by Brian Wertheim on Unsplash.

One of the most interesting diagnosticians of our modern political predicaments, Adrian Pabst is a Professor of Politics at the University of Kent and the author of several books including Postliberal Politics: The Coming Era of Renewal, The Demons of Liberal Democracy, and, with John Milbank, The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future. 

In this recent conversation with Capita’s Joe Waters and Ian Marcus Corbin, Professor Pabst discusses the limits of modern political liberalism, the anthropological disagreements underlying American debates about social policy, and new forms of progressivism centered on the needs of children, families, and communities. The interview was edited for length and clarity by Nancy Vorsanger.

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Capita: Adrian, how do you understand the failure of our current political climate?

“Who are we as social, political beings, seeking mutual recognition and flourishing rather than power or wealth? It’s a lack of courage to follow through on convictions and noble intentions that people clearly have, and to not just talk about other possibilities in the abstract, but actually organize, and mobilize and build those alternatives.”

Adrian Pabst: I think it's essentially a failure to imagine anything that is substantively and significantly different from what we've had for 40, 50 years: individualism, the state and market determining justice and how society should work, vice rather than virtue, abstract values rather than principles embodied in practices. That failure goes to the anthropological and ethical heart of things. Who are we as social, political beings, seeking mutual recognition and flourishing rather than power or wealth? It’s a lack of courage to follow through on convictions and noble intentions that people clearly have, and to not just talk about other possibilities in the abstract, but actually organize, and mobilize and build those alternatives. Our political classes, for all the rhetoric, seem to still be so detached from reality that they can't imagine anything other than what they inhabit. 

Yet there are so many inspiring people and examples. They make me think that if the political classes can move into that space and recognize reality for what it is, all sorts of truly wonderful things are possible again. But at the moment, I struggle to see who can carry this forward, because I don't see enough good people in politics or in business, at least not with a critical mass to shift things. But then, change comes from very small groups, and I remain very hopeful that it's possible. I'm not optimistic that it will happen soon, but I remain very hopeful that it could happen, and I'm now hoping that people can start building the movements we need to change things fundamentally. It happened after the interwar period and I think it can happen again.

From our vantage point, a lot of the disagreement on social policy in the United States hinges on divergent answers to the question Who are we? Are we solitary utility-maximizing individuals or are we dependent and relational? And if we're dependent and relational, we can come to different conclusions, for example, on an issue like child care policy, or social security, or elder care, then we would if we hold the view that we are primarily solitary utility-maximizing individuals. 

You're absolutely right. One part of the political spectrum and, indeed, the academic world, seems to believe that we are just utility-maximizing individuals. Another group, that sometimes overlaps, believes we're just the bearers of individual rights, that we are entitled to certain freedoms, or to things like property. They believe that individual rights are what mark us out, and that the struggle for rights is the great struggle for social justice. And over the last 40 years or so, they often converged. The right promoted individual economic choice, the left promoted individual cultural choice. Then people like Clinton, and Blair, and Cameron, and Obama merged them and took it to the next level. But all of that forgets the things that truly make us human. Rights qua rights don't make us human. Nor does utility. 

What really makes us human is the fact that we are dependent, that we are fundamentally fragile and vulnerable, and that the only way we can protect ourselves is by protecting each other. Dependence, not domination, is the fundamental human condition. That means we should be striving for mutual dependence rather than domination of some over others, and also fundamental recognition of our fragility, of our vulnerability, but also of our amazing talents and vocations, because they're also a source of strength and resilience. We are certainly dependent on one another, and that will never change, and that's a good thing, because we are relational, social, political beings. Rather than just seeing us as fragile in a pejorative sense, it's a great strength to recognize that we are finite, and mortal, and fallible, because from that stems humility and the ability to do good.

“What really makes us human is the fact that we are dependent, that we are fundamentally fragile and vulnerable, and that the only way we can protect ourselves is by protecting each other. Dependence, not domination, is the fundamental human condition. ”

That means recognizing our limits, the limits of others, the limits of nature, of everything. It's vital for us to realize this, or else we elevate technology or other things into false idols. That, as we know, tends to end up in the most horrific crimes that we've seen in the twentieth century. There is, ultimately, a struggle for the soul of humanity, and unless we recognize who we are anthropologically and ethically, and that we are striving for enchanted transcendence, then I think we are getting most political, ethical, and policy questions wrong. We are projecting the wrong assumptions onto reality.

A recognition of limits seems to be deeply realistic: a realistic description of our condition as human beings, but also a realistic description of what's possible in politics. Earlier, you said that our political class is detached from reality. Does that hinge primarily on their failure to recognize limits? Are there other ways in which you find that they're detached from reality?

I think they're detached from reality in all sorts of ways: culturally, in terms of social class, in terms of geography. I think we could do a very detailed analysis of why, essentially, Christopher Lasch was right: that elites have just isolated themselves from ordinary citizens, and that's been going on for a very long time. Of course, there's a long history of that sort of thinking and I believe the center left should reclaim it. This very important heritage is largely absent on the right, because the right has chosen to be on the side of the establishment, not on the side of the people. The fundamental point about limits is part of this long, now deep-seated ideology on the left, which is all about emancipation, autonomy, individual choice. “Freedom from”--negative liberty--as opposed to “freedom to” or “freedom for” something. The idea that there is no transcendence, the idea that everything is clearly secular, and that therefore we're really engaged in a struggle for survival. There's social Darwinism, there's the left's fascination with eugenics, which is an incredibly dark part of its history, but then also, just cutting yourself off from any transcendence. The true path towards something like infinity, though we can never reach it in this life, is closed off, while at the same time, we abolish all other limits. It's a very, very strange juxtaposition. That's where a lot of the fundamental problems stem from.

Some of the truths you're enumerating are widely known, but institutions are dead set against living those truths. 

For instance, in 2019, a big group of CEOs signed a pledge about moving from a shareholder model of capitalism to a stakeholder model. A year later, basically nothing had happened at any of the companies. A number of CEOs who signed the pledge hadn’t even told their boards about it. They hadn't even made an effort. 

In medicine, we know about social determinants of health and that we can only thrive in community. But our hospital systems are designed to maximize profits. So you have doctors who know a lot, and feel a lot, but have to conform to the system. 

There's this iron cage of individualism and utility maximization that people feel powerless to push against. Apart from pushing for thinking and better philosophy, how do we deal with the institutional capture and the incentives? They seem ironclad right now.

Besides some of the anthropological, ethical questions we've touched upon already, institutions are probably the key battleground. It's no good just having policies. Without the right institutional ecology, it's going to be very hard to sustain any kind of intellectual or policy program.  I think those of us who are interested in flourishing, mutual recognition, dependence--the kind of ethics that's metaphysically and theologically informed--are perhaps intellectually winning a number of battles. I think we might be in a certain ascendancy when it comes to public debates, and even in political circles.

But we are very far from exercising strong influence. I think the problem is that there are so few institutions that are now generally open to our ideas. We need to nurture new generations of people who can provide leadership, and that means  we have to think about the next two generations and how to instill the virtues that we think will make the key difference. Meanwhile, we must bring together all the people inside the institutions who are generally committed to this way of thinking, then link them to the world of policy and to legislation where you can actually change the incentive structure. 

Let's not forget, the business world didn't always operate according to these incentives and rewards. Quarterly reporting is only about 40 years old. We need to revisit how we went from a world where investment was about longer-term prosperity to short term profit maximization. 

But are state action and fiscal policy really going to change business practice? I don't see it. We need new company laws that put proper social and ecological responsibility at the heart--not corporate social responsibility, which is window dressing. 

In other words, we need to link ideas to policies and institutions, and we need the creative minorities to bring about transformative change. But today, unlike the post-war era or the new settlement ushered in by Reagan and Thatcher, we don't have enough leaders and institutions willing to move into that space, or sufficient popular participation to make that happen. Because we're so fragmented, we're so polarized, it's hard to create any kind of novel consensus. Who will embody a new covenant and then embed it?

How can we develop a progressive politics that may embrace mechanisms championed by the centrist technocracy for addressing entrenched child- and family-related issues, but without accepting its underlying anthropological and ethical assumptions? We're living through this right now in the United States with President Biden's Build Back Better initiatives.  

First of all, I'd say that the left seems to be stepping back from the hyperindividualism it had championed for 40 years or so.  Hyperindividualism, I think, is seen as a threat. The same is true for the UK and elsewhere. It's interesting that the new German chancellor won the election by saying, This should all be about respect and recognition, no longer about just individual emancipation and autonomy. So, I think we're seeing something in the center left that is significant. I think that can be built upon to say, Well, if hyperindividualism is such a threat to our economy and society, then how can we support all the relationships that help to protect us from it?

And, of course, besides work and community, the family is most important. The left has a long tradition of trying to promote family life over the market. That's very much in the left's intellectual DNA, and it needs to be reaffirmed and reclaimed and renewed. 

In policy terms, it means not just the minimum wage, not just the living wage even--we actually need something like the family wage, which would allow people to feed themselves and their families and lead a dignified life. In rhetorical terms, that's already happening, but from there to actually implementing it is proving very difficult. 

“The left has a long tradition of trying to promote family life over the market. That’s very much in the left’s intellectual DNA, and it needs to be reaffirmed and reclaimed and renewed. ”

Again, the question will be how to convince business that it's in its own self-interest, because with high wages comes more motivation, more creativity, more ingenuity, all of the things that business really should want. So, there are ways to make a very strong economic case for a family wage, as well as an ethical one, and I think the left should be making both those cases. 

And you've got child care and everything else that not only makes life worth living, but also helps the world of work.  So rather than seeing these as trade-offs, we should see them in longer terms of sustained business success. Ethical business can also be more economically successful business because it crowds out bad practice (high staff turnover, low productivity, low creativity) by promoting good practice. And then we're back to the question of changing the incentive structure, which means we're back to the question of how to change company law, how to change all of the regulations around the world of business and how it operates. That's a project for a generation, but we shouldn't forget that, sometimes, these things can happen very quickly.

After all, throughout the nineteenth century, we effectively had monopolies and oligarchies across the western world. Then President Roosevelt split up Standard Oil. Now, I'm not saying that that solves all the problems, but sometimes, legislative change can be a catalyst for all sorts of things. And, in America, you have an amazing tradition of business that has both an economic and a social purpose. So, while we can talk for a long time about everything that's going wrong, we also mustn't forget there are so many examples of businesses that do the right thing, economically, socially, even ecologically these days. And, again, it's often a question of scale. How do we build the incentives and rewards, so that these things become the new norm?

It's very obvious to me that a family wage would help families, particularly young families, who are just starting out having children and don't necessarily have a lot of savings, but frankly, in the book, you say frustratingly little about what such a wage would be, and how it might be implemented in ways that support the twentieth century gains of women in the workplace.

One has to acknowledge that the world now is completely different from the world when this idea first was developed by John Ryan and others, with a male breadwinner, and women confined to the private domestic sphere

I think in terms of where we are today, a family wage would be a way to say to people that they should not be forced into holding down two jobs at the same time just to make ends meet. That's the basic starting point: that any one job is a full-time job and should be enough to feed themselves and their families.

“A family wage would be a way to say to people that they should not be forced into holding down two jobs at the same time just to make ends meet. That’s the basic starting point: that any one job is a full-time job and should be enough to feed themselves and their families.”

And next if both mothers and fathers work and they have children, then if they're both paid a family wage, one of two things can happen: maternity and paternity leave will be far more possible, because there is a family wage that supports the whole family, or if both parents want to work after a few months of leave, they will be able to pay for sufficient child care. In America, I understand, there's often pressure for women to return very quickly after giving birth--six weeks, eight weeks--which is extraordinary, especially for a country where so many politicians talk about family values. Yet one wonders what that means in practice. In Europe, parental leave is possible for quite a long time, but it's paid at such low levels that it becomes almost unsustainable, and mothers are often economically forced to return before they want to. 

And then, over time, a family wage would allow a family to pay for the health care and education that the children need and deserve. So I think there's only a case for it and no case against. The economic argument that it will somehow make business unprofitable simply does not pertain, because we're now thinking of profitability in three-to-five-year terms, as opposed to quarterly or annual terms. We need to completely change the way we think about this. 

This also goes for the public sector, because family wages would mean that people in the public sector are more motivated, more productive, more creative, and it would benefit the quality of public services. We keep on talking about funding:. Does this state spend enough money? Is the money that is spent real value for the taxpayer? And so on.  Where are we talking about the quality of services? 

“That’s where the family wage is so key, because we’re saying that human work should be properly rewarded, because it’s human work. It’s not machines, it’s not robots, it’s not just technology.”

That's where the family wage is so key, because we're saying that human work should be properly rewarded, because it's human work. It's not machines, it's not robots, it's not just technology. So it's a form of recognition, it's a form of reward, and that is what matters in this conversation more than anything else. So many who study business say, If we only saw the firm as a social unit, as a social organization, then so many of the things we currently do, we wouldn't do, and so many other things we currently do not do, we would do. But because we reduce it to an economic unit, we get it all wrong. It goes back to some of the social assumptions that we discussed earlier.

This might make a good last question. Both of us are interested in aesthetics, in beautiful things. We ply our trades making arguments right now, and I hope we make persuasive ones, but how do we make a vision of society where everyone can flourish, and where a lot of these toxic elements are excluded? How do we make that beautiful to people? How do we paint this picture to entice, to pull people towards a better understanding of society?

It's so vital. We know, as Thomas Aquinas said, that the good, the beautiful, and the true are intertwined. We can't just have the true, or the good, or the beautiful on their own. I think the way to do it is by asking, What is it that people truly naturally desire? And they do desire beauty, because it's part of our human condition. Just like we desire knowledge, and ultimately the truth, we also desire the good, we desire the beautiful too. That can be encapsulated in education, in music, in art, and we have to start with things like architecture and housing, and just build beautiful houses, beautiful localities, where people really want to live and stay.

So I think there's something about human life where beauty should always be central, whether it's the liturgy, whether it's school and education, whether it's work, whether it's the places where people live and the places they call home. There is space for beauty everywhere.