'It's good to be different' might be the motto of our times. The celebration
of difference, respect for pluralism, avowal of identity politics - these
are regarded the hallmarks of a progressive, antiracist outlook.
Belief in pluralism and the multicultural society is so much woven into the
fabric of our lives that we rarely stand back to question some of its assumptions.
As the American academic, and former critic of pluralism, Nathan Glazer puts
it in the title of a recent book, We are All Multiculturalists Now.
I want to question this easy assumption that pluralism is self-evidently good.
I want to show, rather, that the notion of pluralism is both logically flawed
and politically dangerous, and that creation of a 'multicultural' society
has been at the expense of a more progressive one.
Proponents of multiculturalism usually put forward two kinds of arguments
in its favour. First, they claim that multiculturalism is the only means of
ensuring a tolerant and democratic polity in a world in which there are deep-seated
conflicts between cultures embodying different values. This argument is often
linked to the claim that the attempt to establish universal norms inevitably
leads to racism and tyranny. Second, they suggest that human beings have a
basic, almost biological, need for cultural attachments. This need can only
be satisfied, they argue, by publicly validating and protecting different
cultures. Both arguments are, I believe, deeply flawed.
The case for 'value pluralism' has probably been best put by the late philosopher
Isaiah Berlin. 'Life may be seen through many windows', he wrote, 'none of
them necessarily clear or opaque, less or more distorting than any of the
others'. For Berlin, there was no such thing as a universal truth, only a
variety of conflicting truths. Different peoples and cultures had different
values, beliefs and truths, each of which may be regarded as valid. Many of
these values and truths were incommensurate, by which Berlin meant that not
only are they incompatible, but they were incomparable, because there was
no common language we could use to compare the one with the other. As the
philosopher John Gray has put it, 'There is no impartial or universal viewpoint
from which the claims of all particular cultures can be rationally assessed.
Any standpoint we adopt is that of a particular form of life and the historic
practices that constitute it.' Given the incommensurability of cultural values,
pluralism, Berlin argued, was the best defence against tyranny and against
ideologies, such as racism, which treated some human beings as less equal
than others.
This argument for pluralism is, as many have pointed out, logically flawed.
If it is true that 'any standpoint we adopt is that of a particular form of
life and the historic practices that constitute it', then this must apply
to pluralism too. A pluralist, in other words, can never claim that plural
society is better, since, according his own argument, 'There is no impartial
or universal viewpoint from which the claims of all particular cultures can
be rationally assessed'. Once you dispense with the idea of universal norms,
then no argument can possess anything more than, at best, local validity.
Many multiculturalists argue not simply that cultural values are incommensurate,
but that also that different cultures should be treated equal respect. The
American scholar Iris Young, for instance, writes that 'groups cannot be socially
equal unless their specific, experience, culture and social contributions
are publicly affirmed and recognised.'
The demand for equal recognition is, however, at odds with the claim that
cultures are incommensurate. To treat different cultures with equal respect
(indeed to treat them with any kind of respect at all) we have to be able
to compare one with the other. If values are incommensurate, such comparisons
are simply not possible. The principle of difference cannot provide any standards
that oblige us to respect the 'difference' of others. At best, it invites
our indifference to the fate of the Other. At worst it licenses us to hate
and abuse those who are different. Why, after all, should we not abuse and
hate them? On what basis can they demand our respect or we demand theirs?
It is very difficult to support respect for difference without appealing to
some universalistic principles of equality or social justice. And it is the
possibility of establishing just such universalistic principle that has been
undermined by the embrace of a pluralistic outlook.
Equality requires a common yardstick, or measure of judgement, not a plurality
of meanings. As the philosopher Richard Rorty observes, the embrace of diversity
and the desire for equality are not easily compatible. For Rorty, those whom
he calls 'Enlightenment liberals' face a seemingly irresolvable dilemma in
their pursuit of both equality and diversity:
Their liberalism forces them to call any doubts about human equality a result of irrational bias. Yet their connoisseurship [of diversity] forces them to realise that most of the globe's inhabitants do not believe in equality, that such a belief is a Western eccentricity. Since they think it would be shockingly ethnocentric to say 'So what? We Western liberals do believe in it, and so much the better for us', they are stuck.
Rorty himself, a self-avowed 'postmodern bourgeois liberal', solves the problem
by arguing that 'equality is good for "us" but not necessarily for
"them". We can see here how the argument for incommensurability
leads not to equal respect for, but to an indifference to, all other cultures.
Equality arises from fact that humans are political creatures and possess
a capacity for culture. But the fact that all humans possess a capacity for
culture does not mean that all cultures are equal. 'We know one of the realest
experiences in cultural life', the art critic Robert Hughes has observed,
'is that of inequalities between books and musical performances and paintings
and other works of art'. Much the same could be said about all cultural and
political forms. Some ideas, some technologies, some political systems are
better than others. And some societies and some cultures are better than others:
more just, more free, more enlightened, and more conducive to human progress.
Indeed the very idea of equality is historically specific: the product of
the Enlightenment and the political and intellectual revolutions that it unleashed.
The idea of the equality of cultures (as opposed to the equality of human
beings) denies one of the critical features of human life and human history:
our capacity for social, moral and technological progress. What distinguishes
humans from other creatures is capacity for innovation and transformation,
for making ideas and artefacts that are not simply different but also often
better, than those of a previous generation or another culture. It is no coincidence
that the modern world has been shaped by the ideas and technologies that have
emerged from Renaissance and Enlightenment. The scientific method, democratic
politics, the concept of universal values - these are palpably better concepts
than those that existed previously. Not because Europeans are a superior people,
but because many of the idea and philosophies that came out of the European
Renaissance and Enlightenment are superior.
To argue this today is, of course, to invite the charge of 'Eurocentrism',
or even racism. This simply demonstrates the irrationality of contemporary
notions of 'racism' and 'antiracism'. Those who actually fought Western imperialism
over the past two centuries recognised that their struggles were rooted in
the Enlightenment tradition. 'I denounce European colonialist scholarship',
wrote CLR James, the West Indian writer and political revolutionary. 'But
I respect the learning and the profound discoveries of Western civilisation.'
Frantz Fanon, one of the great voices of postwar third world nationalism,
similarly argued that the problem was not Enlightenment philosophy but the
failure of Europeans to follow through its emancipatory logic. 'All the elements
of a solution to the great problems of humanity have, at different times,
existed in European thought', he argued. 'But Europeans have not carried out
in practice the mission that fell to them.'
Western liberals were often shocked by the extent to which anti-colonial movement
adopted what they considered to be tainted ideas. The concepts of universalism
and unilinear evolutionism, the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss
observed, found 'unexpected support from peoples who desire nothing more than
to share in the benefits of industrialisation; peoples who prefer to look
upon themselves as temporarily backward than permanently different'. Elsewhere
he noted ruefully that the doctrine of cultural relativism 'was challenged
by the very people for whose moral benefit the anthropologists had established
it in the first place'.
Multiculturalists have turned their back on universalist conceptions not because
such conceptions are racist but because they have given up on the possibility
of economic and social change. We live in an age in which there is considerable
disillusionment with politics as an agency of change, and in which possibilities
of social transformation seem to have receded. What is important about human
beings, many have come to believe, is not their political capacity but their
cultural attachments. Such pessimism has led to multiculturalists to conflate
the idea of humans as culture-bearing creatures with the idea that humans
have to bear a particular culture.
Clearly no human can live outside of culture. But to say this is not to say
they have to live inside a particular one. To view humans as culture-bearing
is to view them as social beings, and hence as transformative beings. It suggests
that humans have the capacity for change, for progress, and for the creation
of universal moral and political forms through reason and dialogue.
To view humans as having to bear specific cultures is, on the contrary, to
deny such a capacity for transformation. It suggests that every human being
is so shaped by a particular culture that to change or undermine that culture
would be to undermine the very dignity of that individual. It suggests that
the biological fact of, say, Bangladeshi ancestry somehow make a human being
incapable of living well except as a participant of Bangladeshi culture. The
idea of culture once connoted all that freed humans from the blind weight
of tradition, has now, in the hands of multiculturalists, become identified
with that very burden.
Multiculturalism is the product of political defeat. The end of the Cold War,
the collapse of the left, the defeat of most liberation movements in the third
world and the demise of social movements in the West, have all transformed
political consciousness. The quest for equality has increasingly been abandoned
in favour of the claim to a diverse society. Campaigning for equality means
challenging accepted practices, being willing to march against the grain,
to believe in the possibility of social transformation. Conversely, celebrating
differences between peoples allows us to accept society as it is - it says
little more than 'We live in a diverse world, enjoy it'. As the American writer
Nancy Fraser has put it, 'The remedy required to redress injustice will be
cultural recognition, as opposed to political-economic redistribution.' Indeed
so deeply attached are multiculturalists to the idea of cultural, as opposed
to economic or political justice, that David Bromwich is led to wonder whether
intellectuals today would oppose economic slavery if it lacked any racial
or cultural dimension.
Not only is the demand for the 'recognition' the product of political pessimism,
it has also become a potential means of implementing deeply authoritarian
policies. Consider, for instance, Tariq Modood's distinction between what
he calls the 'equality of individualism' and the 'equality encompassing public
ethnicity: equality as not having to hide or apologise for one's origins,
family or community, but requiring others to show respect for them, and adapt
public attitudes and arrangements so that the heritage they represent is encouraged
rather than contemptuously expect them to wither away.'
Why should I, as an atheist, be expected to show respect for Christian, Islamic
or Jewish cultures whose views and arguments I often find reactionary and
often despicable? Why should public arrangements be adapted to fit in with
the backward, misogynistic, homophobic claims that religions make? What is
wrong with me wishing such cultures to 'wither away'? And how, given that
I do view these and many other cultures with contempt, am I supposed to provide
them with respect, without disrespecting my own views? Only, the philosopher
Brian Barry suggests 'with a great deal of encouragement from the Politically
Correct Thought Police'.
The thought police are already at work. On more than one occasion over the
past decade I have been refused permission by both newspaper and radio editors
to quote Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses because it was considered
to cause too much 'offence'. The McPherson inquiry into Stephen Lawrence argued
that even racist comments made in the privacy of the home should be made a
criminal offence. Thankfully, this suggestion has so far been ignored politically.
Many multiculturalists, however, wish to go further still, demanding that
all private thought and feelings be subject to political scrutiny. Iris Young
welcomes what she calls 'the continuing effort to politicise vast areas of
institutional, social and cultural life.' Politics, she suggests, 'concerns
all aspects of institutional organisation, public action, social practices
and habits, and cultural meanings'. 'The process of politicising habits, feelings
and expressions of fantasy and desire', can Young believes, 'foster a cultural
revolution'.
Culture, faith, lifestyle, feelings - these are all aspects of our private
lives and should be of no concern to the state or other public authorities.
Multiculturalist policies inevitably bring to mind George Orwell's description
in 1984 - 'A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of
the Thought Police... His friendships, his relaxations, his behaviour towards
his wife and children, the expression on his face when he is alone, the words
he mutters in his sleep, even the characteristic movements of his body are
all jealously scrutinised.'
The irony of multiculturalism is that, as a political process, it undermines
what is valuable about cultural diversity. Diversity is important, not in
and of itself, but because it allows us to expand our horizons, to compare
and contrast different values, beliefs and lifestyles, and make judgements
upon them. In other words, because it allows us to engage in political dialogue
and debate that can help create more universal values and beliefs, and a collective
language of citizenship. But it is precisely such dialogue and debate, and
the making of such judgements, that contemporary multiculturalism attempts
to suppress in the name of 'tolerance' and 'respect'.
A truly plural society would be one in which citizens have full freedom to
pursue their different values or practices in private, while in the public
sphere all citizens would be treated as political equals whatever the differences
in their private lives. Today, however, pluralism has come to mean the very
opposite. The right to practice a particular religion, speak a particular
language, follow a particular cultural practice is seen as a public good rather
than a private freedom. Different interest groups demand to have their 'differences'
institutionalised in the public sphere. And to enforce such a vision we have
to call in the Thought Police.
Multiculturalism is an authoritarian, anti-human outlook. True political progress
requires not recognition but action, not respect but questioning, not the
invocation of the Thought Police but the forging of common bonds and collective
struggles.