Why This Liberal Couldn’t Support Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn
NOTE: This article reflects my views in 2016. I have since changed some of my thoughts regarding Bernie Sanders (but not Jeremy Corbyn).
This is a difficult topic to write.
You know, Bernie Sanders is a nice guy, and I quite like him as a person. He believes in equal opportunity, and so do I. So far, so good. On the other hand, I didn’t actually like Hillary’s policies; I certainly preferred Obama over her. If Joe Biden ran, I would also have supported him over Hillary. I also agree with many on the left that Hillary could have cared more about economic equality. So why didn’t I support Bernie?
The short answer is, their different approaches to the role of government.
Bernie’s vision of what government should do was too intrusive, too big government for me. I believe in equality, but I also believe in limited government. In fact, that’s not a contradiction, unless you happen to believe in the kind of ‘limited government’ that the Republican right believes in (i.e. almost no public sector).
If you believe in equality but also believe in limited government, you use the smallest government method to achieve the aim of equal opportunity. For example, rather than promising free education for all, I would prefer limiting government spending to those who need it, and let the rich parents pay. That way, not only can the government save money, we can also put more poor students into college. Rather than having a single-payer health system, it would be perhaps preferable to have a public-private hybrid system, as in Australia and some European countries. Also, heavily restricting free trade is a retrograde policy that was discredited back in the 1970s. Instead, the government should focus on helping industries and workers adapt to economic situations, for example by discouraging the entry of young adults into non-competitive industries.
From what I could see, Bernie wasn’t interested enough in using the smallest government method to achieve equal opportunity.
Socializing the means of production?
Of course, Bernie isn’t extremely big government, he’s just ‘a bit too much government’ for me. On the other hand, British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn appears to be even more in favour of increasing the size of government. Needless to say, I would have had to vote for Theresa May and the Conservatives in last year’s elections if I lived in Britain, even though Corbyn is a nice gentleman. However, even Corbyn is quite mild compared to many others, who just don’t happen to be in positions of leadership (yet). In fact, big government has become so popular in some sections of society that even the idea of nationalizing industries, i.e. socializing the means of production, is making a comeback. Maybe all this is a reaction to the kind of limited government that Thatcher and others started in the 1980s. But even if we care about equality of opportunity and oppose Thatcherite neoliberalism, there is still a case for limiting the size of government, right?
For me, as a moral libertarian, the need to limit the size of government rests with the principle of equality of moral agency. For moral and religious reasons, I believe that no individual should have more moral agency than any other, and therefore all individuals should have maximum liberty over their own lives. In other words, no individual should be able to make moral decisions for another. A government that is too big is incompatible with this aim. Centralized ownership and control of property is effectively the same as centralized concentration of power, meaning individuals making decisions in government have all the moral agency, and individuals outside government have none. Just look at the former USSR.
Modern Western leftists like to argue that, because theirs is a democratic socialism, we wouldn’t end up with a USSR-like situation. But then, in North America, Western Europe and Australia, we already live in democracies, where once every few years we get to vote for one bunch of politicians or another. Does this mean that every decision they make conforms with majority opinion? Do our politicians never try to get around public opinion to enact policies according to their ideologies or their associated interest groups? True democratic socialism (in the sense modern Western leftists use it) can only occur when every issue is put to a referendum, and even then things may still be problematic. The only way to preserve liberty and true equality would be to limit the size of government.
Of course, there are other reasons why one might support limited government. It would be helpful if there were more such voices out there.
Those of us who believe in equality but nevertheless believe in limited government, we need to speak up now, before it’s too late. We need to make our case heard in the free market of ideas.
