Darwinian Conservatism and the Liberal Welfare State

Author Govert SchullerPosted on July 22, 2020August 1, 2020Categories PoliticsTags Biopolitics, Evolutionary Psychology, Politics

§1. Introduction.

In his book Darwinian Conservatism the political scientist Larry Arnhart makes the case that traditional conservatism is the right political philosophy for humanity to follow because “it rests on a view of human nature that is supported by Darwinian biology” (Arnhart, 10). Arnhart developed his case by way of defending five propositions, each dealing with how Darwinism would support a specific conservative proposition.

This essay will concentrate on the following question: Has Arnhart made a persuasive argument for Darwinian conservatism? My answer to the question is negative, because I think Arnhart makes certain jumps, or takes shortcuts, which are undermining the strength of the connection between his Darwinian premises and conservative conclusions. I will support my view with three arguments in which I will try to show that Darwinism does not necessarily lead to conservatism and can, for equally valid reasons, be interpreted to support liberalism.

The three arguments I like to develop are: 1) Arnhart does not consider reasonable liberal alternatives. Instead he sets up Liberalism as a straw man and then easily knocks it down; 2) Arnhart does not put his hypothesis to the test by looking at comparative research about how different countries with different socio-economic systems satisfy the twenty basic desires he identifies; 3) Arnhart thinks there is no manner to rank and prioritize our desires and therefore concludes society should have a libertarian, hands-off attitude in this regard. Based on psychological research and common sense one can reason in favor of some kind of ranking, which supports a more liberal direction of the policy making process.

I will also develop two lines of argument to challenge my own reasoning. 1) I will play with the idea that people in social democracies, though they might report at the subjective level a high sense of well-being and are by objective measures well off, they are deep down miserable, but do not know that, because they suppress such realization by their hedonistic life-style. 2) Secondly, arguing against the idea that the European social democracies evolved naturally, I will for the sake of argument side with conspiricist conservatives and make the case that the welfare state came into being as the result of devious conniving behind the scenes by an international network of individuals, families, and semi-secret groups.

§2.1. Liberal Alternatives

Arnhart seems to be too eager to make his case for Darwinian Conservatism and drive towards its conclusion without carefully considering possible alternatives. First of all, though he does address criticisms of his five main propositions, they are all challenges posed by other conservatives, especially transcendentalist conservatives (Arnhart, 10-13). Secondly, criticisms coming from more moderate liberal positions were not included among the commentaries solicited by the editor Kenneth Blanchard of the expanded edition of Darwinian Conservatism. The challenges came from transcendentalist conservatives and secular libertarians, not liberals or Marxists.

The liberals depicted and refuted by Arnhart are mostly Utopian liberals, whose abstract concept of liberty, rationalist ethics and Utopian programs based on the presumed perfectibility of man, are all shown to be dangerous ideas, because they do not take into account the more biological, realistic view of man with his natural desires and long established habits. Some of my liberal friends could not recognize themselves in the Utopian liberal depiction as presented by Arnhart and thought the argument reeked of a straw-man fallacy. This might be true from the perspective of more moderate, pragmatic liberals, but I think it certainly is applicable to the more classical Utopian and Marxist variations of liberalism.

It is easy to show with the historical record that Utopian left wing and authoritarian right wing regimes do a poor job in enabling their population to flourish, but as little as anti-fascism leads to liberalism does anti-communism lead to conservatism. And it is the latter move which Arnhart seems to make in his justification of Darwinian conservatism. If you do not want to end up with the unsatisfactory and unnatural results of liberal Utopianism, you will have to embrace a form of naturalistic conservatism as its only alternative. This is the fallacy of a false dichotomy. There is a continuum between the extremes of anarchy and totalitarianism, and pragmatic liberalism, as it evolved in Europe, is one of many socio-political systems on that continuum.

Arnhart does engage in his book the work of Peter Singer, because of the latter’s plea for a Darwinian liberalism based on biological science and not primarily on abstract moral principles or Marxist ideology, though those seem still operative in Singer’s thinking. Arnhart’s deconstruction of Singer follows two lines of counter-attack. First, he thinks that Singer’s principle of ethical impartiality, which is confessedly a rational principle, has no basis in human nature and therefore can not really be considered Darwinian, and secondly, that much of Singer’s “‘deflated’ leftism” is acceptable to conservatives, as long as it is based on the idea that “conformity to human nature is a fundamental standard for good social policy” (Arnhart, 128).

But the tables can be turned here and an argument can be made that liberal ends still might be attained in conformity with human nature. For example, one could argue that it was in conformity with the given natural desires, changing emotions and habits and evolving, prudential reasoning of its citizens that the European welfare state evolved. And it evolved naturally and gradually by incrementally changing its collective habits, deliberations and laws. If conservatives would recognize the gradual evolving quality of this process and see that it harmonized with man’s evolved nature, they would not have any reason to oppose the quite liberal outcome. Only by deducing arguments from purely ideological or religious sources could they make a case against a naturally evolved welfare state, but not on Darwinian conservative principles only.

§2.2. Comparative Research

Another line of critique involves empirical data. Arnhart does not provide enough supportive research in which countries with a different socio-political system are compared in which way they accomplish the satisfaction of the basic, genetically driven desires of humans. Arnhart stated that specifically the USA and the UK fulfill those desires, but, instead of making the case, he merely refers to Paul Rubin’s Darwinian Politics (Arnhart, 84). I find several problems with that. First of all, it looks contradictory to lump the USA with the UK. To me the UK is, even after Thatcher’s reforms, a fully developed welfare state comparable to other western European states. Maybe Canada might have been a better choice to put in the same category as the USA. Secondly, as I somewhat developed elsewhere, Rubin recognizes other natural desires which lead to a welfare state.¹ This implies that, if these desires are considered natural and the welfare state provides a legitimate satisfaction of those desires, then the existence of the welfare state is justified on Darwinian principles.

My own exploratory research, comparing the liberal Netherlands with the more conservative USA, indicated that Holland is better off as far as the satisfaction of natural desires are concerned. In a preliminary conclusion in one of my entries I stated that the Dutch have “better health care, longer life span, a supportive parental leave system, less poverty, less hunger, less corruption, better protected fundamental and property rights, a better civil and criminal justice system, and greater press freedom”.²

One of the statistics I did not use in my entry was the index for human development and overall well-being. Here the numbers become interesting because in the Human Development Index (HDI), which is based on life expectancy, education and income, the US and Holland both score very high and very close. Actually, in 2011 the US and Holland tied at the third place after Norway and Australia and in 2012 the US went slightly ahead. But when the numbers are adjusted by taking into account income inequality–a procedure now widely accepted–the ranking changes quite dramatically. When one looks at the Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI) the US dropped a whopping 19 places in 2011 and 13 places in 2012, while the European countries on the list kept their high ranking because of their much lower inequality.³ The adjustment is justified by the idea that, when there is a large income inequality in a country and, because of that, most of the benefits are concentrated at the top, the average citizen will have a lower HDI then if the benefits would have been more equally spread over the population. The Inequality-adjusted HDI is thereby seen as the actual index and the unadjusted HDI as an index for a country’s potential. From this idea can be deduced that, though the US has a very high potential for human development, the country does not actualize this potential fully because of its income inequality. And of all the developed countries it is the USA which has the largest difference between its potential and actual development.

§2.3. Maslow and the Ranking of our Desires

It might not be true that there is no way to rank our desires and that, in light of such lack, one cannot assign policy priorities to help people attain some of the basic ones. A more careful, and even scientifically based model to create some overall ranking of our natural desires might lead to a more liberal and less conservative socio-political order.

Arnhart states that to “combine and rank the goods of life, each individual must exercise prudential judgment in deciding how to arrange and integrate these goods in a way that is fitting for the contingent and particular circumstances of the individual and for that individual’s propensities, abilities and history” (Arnhart, 239). This more open-ended, flexible and tolerant conception of human goods, which he named the “inclusive end conception,” seemed to have been developed in opposition to the more rigid “dominant end conception,” which comes with most transcendentalist conservative and, for that matter, Utopian liberal world views.

The question whether evolutionary theory can provide something of a ranking of our natural desires in such a way that we do not have to appeal to a transcendental source outside life itself to indicate which of our natural desires are good or bad. Question is if there is something of a natural ranking already taking place without humans necessarily noticing it. We might already act according to a certain naturally evolved and reasonably coherent value system, but are not yet aware of such. Or maybe some psychologists, though not explicitly working within the evolutionary paradigm, have found a hierarchy in our desires. If so, we’ll have to see if it harmonizes with evolutionary psychology.

The system I have in mind is the hierarchy of needs as developed by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow and presented in his paper “A Theory of Human Motivation.” In this now more or less accepted theory humans have a hierarchy of needs ranging from very basic physiological needs to the highest, which is self-actualization. And we move from first satisfying the basic set of needs to the next, higher set. Without getting into details, it is obvious that there is quite an overlap between the basic needs Maslow’ identified and the natural desires Arnhart enumerated. The first question is if Maslow’s hierarchy can be used to organize and evaluate our needs and thereby overcome the alleged problem of the probable absence of a transcendental source to provide a similar service. The second question is if this hierarchy can help settle questions in political philosophy.

Reflecting on the logic of its organization in the form of a pyramid, I can agree that the basic physiological needs come first to be satisfied. No life without air, water, food or sleep. And our sense of evolved sympathy would find it very hard to see or contemplate anybody in our proximity deprived of them. Slightly less vital for our survival, but still quite important, are our security needs for shelter, health and a safe environment. Then, one step further up in the hierarchy, are our social needs for friendship, romance, familial bonding and communal belonging. Next is our need for a sense of self-worth, which finds satisfaction in personal accomplishment and social recognition. Maslow’s highest rung is the need for the conscious actualization of one’s potential, a level where one can find peak experiences of flow, mastery and self-transcendence.

Given this hierarchy I would venture that a community should be organized such that a) the basic biological needs (food, health and shelter) are one way or another guaranteed to all members and that b) long-term policies are such that they give the best infrastructure for the optimal fulfillment of the other needs. A right to work and a minimum living wage would take care of the basic needs including housing, and a non-corrupt government can provide safety, health insurance and affordable education. At the same time there should be a maximum of freedom for people to pursue their social, romantic, vocational, economic, creative and spiritual needs. Apparently the social democracies of north-western Europe have accomplished a lot in this direction. They only still have to get their Muslim population to buy into the program, because the Muslim appeal to their own transcendental source of morality is posing somewhat of a danger to this more enlightened, secular, semi-self-regulating set-up.

In summary, what seems to be overlooked in the dichotomy between the libertarian “inclusive end conception” and the religionist or secular Utopian “dominant end conception” is a ‘two-tiered end conception’, which differentiates between basic and elective goods based on Maslow’s hierarchy of natural needs. The basic needs are food, health and shelter, which all should be more or less guaranteed by a polity if these could not be met within the context of a free market economy. The elective needs are social, vocational, cultural and spiritual, for which fulfillment a polity only has to provide the infrastructure, but not its actual fulfillment. To me it looks like that the social democracies of Europe have organized their societies around such a two-tiered conception of human needs and have done so quite successfully.

§3.1. Are the Dutch Really Better off?

Recently I discussed with a very wealthy, conservative father of one of my friends how mellow and happy the Dutch seem to be. He thought that the Dutch might not know they are actually unhappy. Maybe they “smoke” too much. They think they are happy, but their hedonistic lifestyle suppresses the fact that they are miserable escapists living in a life-sapping, oppressive welfare state. Given the idea that people tend to be self-deluded and self-justifying and that people might not be honest when asked to report about personal feelings, the idea of the Dutch not being really happy has some plausibility. The problem is then, of course, how to tease out the truth. Methodologically speaking this is tricky, because it is quite complex to differentiate between what people report about their well-being and how they deep down really think and feel. Probably the Harvard-based Project Implicit could help in this regard as they investigate “thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness and control.”⁵

Maybe by looking at statistics about suicide in the US and the Netherlands it might become clear if it is reasonable to think that there is a discrepancy between a nation’s self-image and reality. According to statistics from the European Commission the average suicide rate in the Netherlands in 2009 was 8.5 per 100.000 inhabitants (males 12.0 and females 5.0).⁶ According to the US Department of Health and Human Services the average suicide rate in the US in the same year was 12 per 100.000 inhabitants (males 19.5 and females 5.5).⁷ Wikipedia took these numbers and ranked 107 countries by average suicide rate, from high to low. The US came in 33rd place, just ahead of the traditionally suicide-prone populations of Sweden (11.9) and Norway (11.9) and just below Communist Cuba (12.3). The Netherlands came in at 51st place, leaving only Spain (7.6), Italy (6.3) and Greece (3.5) with lower rates of suicide in Europe.⁸ It looks like that females in both countries are equally inclined towards suicide and that US males are 50% more likely to commit suicide than their Dutch counterparts. If human nature is in general similar in both countries it seems reasonable to conclude that American men are one and a half times more unhappy then Dutch men. But, what if the psychological profile of both populations is quite different as my friend’s father suggests? Is it plausible to assume that the oppressiveness of the welfare state makes people more unhappy, but at the same time its tolerance of escapist habits would assuage this side effect and keeps people from committing suicide? Rationally speaking I can see the logic, but intuitively I find it quite absurd. It is an interesting question though and I have to admit that I am at a loss of arguments to be convinced one way or the other. I can only reiterate that Project Implicit might bring some clarity here.

§3.2. The Deviously Engineered Nature of the Welfare State

The argument that the welfare state is somehow the natural outcome of a social evolution in conformity with man’s natural desires might not be true and merely a rationalization. The truth is more ominous and relatively hidden. In broad lines it is as follows. For a few centuries a network of groups and individuals have conspired to introduce socialist policies into the fabric of society. Their ends justified their means and through Communist revolution, Fabian gradualism or the surreptitious infiltration of governments and civic institutions they steered the west into the adoption of unnatural, collectivist policies and the creation of institutions like the European Union and the United Nations. Libertarians and conservatives in the USA are the last bulwark against this encroachment and will have to engage in a battle of epic proportions to keep the USA free by rolling back the welfare state domestically and promote free markets and limited government in the international arena. A Darwinian conservative could use this conspiricist argument against the welfare state with great effect, because the deceitful origin of the welfare state shows how counter-natural it actual is.

§4. Conclusion

Though I heartily agree with the premise that a sound political philosophy has to take into account the evolved nature of man, I cannot agree with the idea that such a philosophy is necessarily conservative. Ironically, by the standards of Darwinian conservatism itself, European countries enabled the natural evolution of their welfare state (§2.1) and do a better job in fulfilling man’s natural desires than the more conservative USA (§2.2.). The difference between Arnhart’s more libertarian-leaning Darwinism and the Darwinism which leads naturally to the European style welfare state is that the latter incorporates 1) some natural needs which justify a welfare state identified by Rubin, but overlooked by Arnhart (§2.2.), and 2) it incorporates a two-tiered conception of natural needs instead of Arnhart’s proposed inclusive end conception (§2.3.). Two arguments can be made to totally undermine the above idea of Darwinian liberalism. The first is to argue that people in a welfare state are worse off because they are actually unhappy, but smother that feeling by unnatural and immoral activities (§3.1) and secondly by arguing that the welfare state is nothing more than the unnatural and immoral product of a long-term deception perpetrated by a devilish, Machiavellian cabal (§3.2.).

This paper was written for the class “Biopolitics and Human Nature” (Political Science
320) conducted by Prof. Larry Arnhart in the spring of 2013 at Northern Illinois University

[Response to paper: Arnhart, Larry. 2020. “Darwinian Conservatism, Darwinian Liberalism, and the Welfare State: A Reply to Govert Schuller“. Darwinian Conservatism by Larry Arnhart. Blog. 30 July 2020.]

Sources Cited

Arnhart, Larry, et al. 2009. Darwinian Conservatism: A Disputed Question. K.C. Blanchard, (Ed.). Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic.