John Gray occupies a unique position in British intellectual life. He is a serious academic who writes widely on the political issues of the day; a broadsheet polemicist who understands the philosophical foundations of policy debates. His recent move to London as professor of European thought at the London School of Economics is likely to raise his already high profile. But Gray's influence does not come simply from his role as a public intellectual-a stance common abroad, though unusual here. The way that the evolution of his thought has both tracked and foreshadowed the shifting concerns of British politics gives his views particular resonance. To partisans of the free market-the position he once held and now denounces-he is an apostate. To the soft communitarians of New Labour, he is a prize exhibit, the sinner who repented. For the rest of us, he represents something more complex: a sustained attempt to explore the possibility of reconciling justice and social cohesion, while dispensing with the idea that reason alone can solve the problems of political life.
Gray has received a certain amount of stick over the years for changing his mind about the free market-as well as some uncritical approbation. And it is true that his views now are far from the Hayekian approach he endorsed in the first edition of his book, Liberalism, in 1986. Since then, those familiar with Gray's writing have watched his titles chart a scorched-earth march through the fundamental doctrines of modern political and social thought: Beyond the New Right (1994), Post-liberalism (1994), The Undoing of Conservatism (1994), Enlightenment's Wake (1995), After Social Democracy (1996), Endgames: Questions in Late Modern Political Thought (1997). Gray presents himself as a fearless traveller striding towards the logical conclusion of his central beliefs, watching a series of obsolete dogmas fall away as he passes. It will come as little surprise to readers who know his taste for demolition that Gray's new book on international capitalism portrays the age of free trade and globalisation as a False Dawn (Granta Books, March 1998).
A predilection for the sweeping and the ironic is characteristic of Gray's intellectual style. In his tendency to follow ideas to their rigorous ends, he is at odds with the tolerant scepticism of his intellectual hero, the late Isaiah Berlin, and perhaps closer in manner to the classical free market liberals in whose camp he began. Nevertheless, the absolutism of his pronouncements on the bankruptcy of free market thought should not obscure the elements of continuity in Gray's thinking. What has changed is his conception of the relative importance of individual autonomy and social cohesion in the make-up of human well-being. What has remained constant is his hostility to a traditional progressive programme: the use of the state to promote broad policies of redistribution and welfare, based on an appeal to abstract principles of social justice.
In his free market phase, Gray hailed classical liberalism as "the political theory of modernity." He argued that it could only be understood as the product of its historical context-the rise of European individualism in the early modern period-and that it depended on a conception of individual autonomy as the fundamental component of freedom. Liberalism responded to the challenge of maintaining order in societies where people increasingly wanted to make up their own minds about how they should live their lives. Its ascendancy was made possible because an Enlightenment worldview was coming to prevail in most western societies. This was the idea that social and political structures (indeed, morality altogether) should be founded on an appeal to reason as well as traditional practice.
From the start Gray was circling around the issues which have continued to preoccupy him: the relationship between individualism and civil society; and the tension between reason and tradition as sources of authority for political systems. At first he believed (as conservative thinkers such as his former pupil David Willetts still maintain) that the fabric of civil society could best be maintained by keeping the government out of peoples' lives as far as possible. The "stable moral traditions and social conventions" that he valued did not conflict with the demands of autonomy, but would be reinforced by allowing people control over their lives. What counted was "practical knowledge"-traditions people could not always articulate but which informed their actions-and this was lost or diffused as power and authority were transferred to the collective institutions of the state.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Gray came to see the operation of the market in a harsher light. (He has told interviewers that the impetus for his conversion was partly personal-the serious illness of someone close to him led to a stronger appreciation of the value of the NHS.) The corrosive effect of market forces, he now believed, was working to destroy the fabric of society as well as Britain's environmental inheritance. By emphasising mobility, deregulation and competition, Thatcherite conservatism was undermining the ties of family and community that conservatives had always cherished.
For a time, Gray argued that conservatism could be saved through greater sensitivity to such concerns. But he soon decided that the destruction wrought by Thatcherism had undermined established patterns of social life to such an extent that no basis was left for a conservative revival. He transferred his allegiance to New Labour.
A related change was also taking place in Gray's philosophical views. His early writing on liberalism had located it in a specific historical context, but also recognised the aspiration to universality as a central feature of all forms of liberal thought. Although he presented himself as a liberal, and argued strongly for the importance of liberalism in modern individualist societies, Gray never seemed comfortable with the idea that liberalism had some special validity for all societies. His 1986 book Liberalism is inconclusive on what Gray calls "the search for foundations"-the attempt to justify a liberal philosophy as potentially applicable to all people, not simply those who already happen to share an individualist liberal culture. In any case, by the early 1990s he had come to call himself a "post-liberal." He no longer believed that liberal theory was universally true or liberal regimes uniquely legitimate: "Human beings have flourished in regimes that do not shelter a liberal civil society, and there are forms of human flourishing that are driven out in liberal regimes."
For Gray, the failure of liberal universalism is symptomatic of a deeper flaw: the arrogance and futility of what he calls "the Enlightenment project" of constructing morality and political theory on a foundation of abstract reasoning. Gray believes that such an ambition tends to destroy the traditions which give meaning to our lives, and leads to disenchantment and self-regarding nihilism. But he also argues that it is doomed to failure, because in the end there is no single scale of fundamental values that fit together in a coherent way. Following Isaiah Berlin, Gray calls this doctrine "value-pluralism." He believes that different individuals and societies may come to choose different world-views without one being necessarily superior to the others. According to Gray, this is not a statement of relativism, but simply recognition that many of the things we think are important conflict with each other. People and states must follow one path or another without any rational basis to choose between them.
It is easy to see how Gray's scepticism about the free market and his disillusion with universalist political theory are related. The common thread is a greater appreciation of communal forms of life. But it is worth distinguishing between Gray's two moves, because they are pulling in opposite directions. His concern for social cohesion in Britain leads him to argue for an enhanced role for public policy in collective provision-which is why he is now the toast of the centre-left. Yet his rejection of universalism deprives him of any clear external standard by which the practices of the state can be justified. At the same time as he endorses the policies of a progressive political party, he appears to deny that the idea of progress can have any real meaning. In this sense the assertion that Gray has moved from right to left is too simple.
The same complexity exists in Gray's discussion of international affairs. False Dawn is an attack on almost every aspect of globalisation, notably the integration of international capital markets and the deregulation of world trade. Gray admits that "a global free market is incredibly productive." His charge against the international economic order is that it assumes that all societies will tend to converge on an Anglo-American model of deregulated, free market capitalism-despite the damage this model has inflicted on the countries which have adopted it. Advocates of a global regime of laissez-faire do not recognise that other political and economic models may do more to protect the well-being of their citizens.
Gray is never precise about the connection between globalisation and the spread of domestic free market regimes, nor does he always distinguish between the different aspects of international economic integration. But his primary concern is the worldview which he sees behind all facets of the modern global economy: the arrogant western assumption that freeing market forces from social and political control will lead us to an international utopia. For Gray it is the last embodiment of the "Enlightenment project" of a universal civilisation. Because it neglects the importance of local traditions, it is doomed to break down in a morass of insecurity, populist backlashes, even international anarchy.
Some of Gray's greatest scorn is reserved for thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama, with his presumption that all societies will tend towards liberal democratic market economies. Gray argues that different forms of capitalism and different political structures will be appropriate for different cultures. His antipathy to free market capitalism will be shared by many who regard themselves as liberal internationalists. But it is one thing to believe that an American economic model should not be implanted across the world; quite another to argue, as Gray does, that there can be no rational criteria for evaluating the legitimacy of other systems. Surely Gray caricatures the legacy of the Enlightenment when he presents it as a demand that all societies must be constructed on identical lines. If there are principles we hold to be universally valid, they would be likely to operate at a more general level-for example, by asserting that no government is legitimate which is not based on the consent of its people.
Against such a rational standard, Gray seems to propose a different kind of test. There is no abstract principle that gives authority to a political system. All we can ask is whether people are likely to flourish under it-or, at a more basic level, put up with it. In a recent article in International Affairs he wrote that "people everywhere demand from governments security against the worst evils: war and civil disorder, criminal violence, and lack of the means of decent subsistence... It is not whether a state is a liberal democracy that determines its legitimacy; it is how well it secures its citizens against the worst evils. This is a universal requirement, rooted in human needs that are universal; but how it is best met depends on many and varying circumstances."
It is not clear whether Gray means to elevate the requirement for well-being into an abstract legitimating principle, or simply to propose it as a law of social psychology. Is a government which ignores it doing something wrong, or simply reducing the chances of its own survival? If he means the former, then Gray seems to fall prey to the kind of rational universalism he derides as Enlightenment superstition. Yet the latter deprives him of any real purchase to distinguish between the merits of rival political approaches. With no conception of fundamental human rights, Gray cannot distinguish between a liberal social market economy and an authoritarian regime. Because authoritarianism entails, by definition, restrictions on freedom of expression, it is impossible to say at what point the price being paid for security becomes too high.
Gray's concern about the harmful effect of free markets is undermined by his denial that social justice can have any absolute meaning. Even in a liberal society, he can only argue that the government should pursue policies which accord with the moral sentiments of its citizens. In this magazine he recently proposed a vision of equality based on inclusion and the satisfaction of basic needs (November 1997). He described it as "a compelling ideal of social justice that articulates the sense of fairness of large sections of the population." Gray was giving a theoretical backing to New Labour thinking: an emphasis on equality of opportunity through the redirection of public spending rather than direct taxation. But he sidestepped the conflicts inherent in any politics of redistribution.
No government of left or right can hope to pursue a vision of justice which flies in the face of prevailing values. But to be of any use as a basis for policy, a progressive theory of justice must allow an appeal against inconsistencies in the outlook of the majority. So long as Gray denies that this is possible, his thoughts on the link between social justice and communal forms of life will be ineffective as a tool for confronting the most difficult questions which face us.
False dawn
John Gray
Granta Books, ?17.99
