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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
SERIES EDITORS: DAVID F. HARDWICK · LESLIE MARSH

Liberalism
and Socialism
Mortal Enemies
or Embittered Kin?

Edited by
Matthew McManus
 Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism

Series Editors
David F. Hardwick, Department of Pathology and
Laboratory Medicine, The University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Leslie Marsh, Department of Pathology and Laboratory
Medicine, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver,
BC, Canada
This series offers a forum to writers concerned that the central presuppo-
sitions of the liberal tradition have been severely corroded, neglected, or
misappropriated by overly rationalistic and constructivist approaches.
The hardest-won achievement of the liberal tradition has been the
wrestling of epistemic independence from overwhelming concentrations
of power, monopolies and capricious zealotries. The very precondition
of knowledge is the exploitation of the epistemic virtues accorded by
society’s situated and distributed manifold of spontaneous orders, the
DNA of the modern civil condition.
With the confluence of interest in situated and distributed liber-
alism emanating from the Scottish tradition, Austrian and behavioral
economics, non-Cartesian philosophy and moral psychology, the editors
are soliciting proposals that speak to this multidisciplinary constituency.
Sole or joint authorship submissions are welcome as are edited collec-
tions, broadly theoretical or topical in nature.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15722
 Matthew McManus
Editor

Liberalism
and Socialism
Mortal Enemies or Embittered Kin?
Editor
Matthew McManus
Whitman College
Walla Walla
WA, USA

ISSN 2662-6470 ISSN 2662-6489 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism
ISBN 978-3-030-79536-8 ISBN 978-3-030-79537-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79537-5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting,
reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical
way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software,
or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
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herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with
regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Dedicated to the workers and volunteers struggling against the COVID 19
pandemic
 Acknowledgements

Every book racks up considerably greater debts than will be recognized

by its readers. Needless to say that goes especially for a book with a
variety of contributors like this essay collection. The most important
people to thank are Dr. Leslie Marsh and the staff of Palgrave Macmillan,
who showed early enthusiasm for the volume and have supported it
throughout. We would also like to thank the staff and faculty at our
respective academic institutions, with particular gratitude going from
the editor to the Political Science and International Relations Depart-
ment at Tec de Monterrey and the Department of Politics at Whitman
College for the time and resources to organize a project of this magni-
tude. The writers also express our gratefulness to the millions of frontline
workers trying to halt the spread of COVID 19 and keep society func-
tioning in the midst of an intense global crisis. They say you don’t realize
what is really important until it is threatened, and the pandemic has
undoubtedly drawn attention to the countless ways everyone from nurses
to grocery store clerks play a vital role in holding the world together
when it threatens to come apart. Future generations will owe a lot to
their bravery and resoluteness. We would also like to express thanks to

vii
viii Acknowledgements

our friends and family members—they know who they are!—for all their
acts of kindness and patience big and small. It is often underappreci-
ated how much even writing a small essay depends on the support one
receives. And finally the editor would like to sadly express his gratitude to
Connor O’Callaghan, a brilliant young scholar and dear friend who died
far too young. He would have turned 30 years old as these words were
written, and no doubt would have contributed so much to understanding
these interesting times.
 Introduction

Since 2016 socialism has made a major comeback as a term with political
and cultural clout, particularly within American politics. Various polls
suggest a large number of young people support “socialism”—gravitating
towards politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The Democratic Socialists of America have also enjoyed explosive growth
in the past few years. At the same time the specter of a renewed Red
Menace has led to a substantial backlash and debate over the meaning
of socialism, its history, and in particular its contentious relationship
with liberalism. Even Senators like Rand Paul have produced mono-
graphs contending against a rejuvenated economic left. These debates
obviously have a deep history characterized by ruptures, continuity, and
some surprising compromises; from J. S. Mill’s contentious relationship
to socialism, Marx’s complex but often lacerating relationship to classical
political economy, to the mid-twentieth-century “Great Society” theo-
rists and critics who sought to enact a compromise between seemingly
intractable foes. Much is the same today. For some contemporary clas-
sical liberals and neoliberals, following in the footsteps of F. A. Hayek,

ix
x Introduction

socialism is antithetical to everything liberalism stands for. Various social-

ists, particularly in the Marxist tradition, have agreed. But for authors
like the late John Rawls, Axel Honneth, and others socialism may in
fact by continuous with or even the culmination of liberalism. Particu-
larly when socialism is interpreted less as an account of economic liber-
ation, and instead as a sustained argument of moral equality and the
democratization of different spheres of life.
The essays in our volume Liberalism and Socialism: Mortal Enemies
or Embittered Kin? are designed to provide an academically rigorous
and interdisciplinary take on these developments and debates. The book
has two interconnected objectives. The first is to explore the appeal
of socialism in the twenty-first century, particularly to millennials and
generation Z. There are many interdependent dimensions to this project.
We must first look at why modern classical liberalism and neoliberalism
have generated tepid support in recent years. What is remarkable is how
unlikely this would have seemed to commentators in the 1980s and
1990s, when “end of history” theses proudly or nostalgically proclaimed
the eternal victory of liberal capitalism over all possible political and
economic competitors. Since then developed states have witnessed two
major recessions, a series of misguided wars in the Middle East, and
a global pandemic. Combined with profound cultural and technolog-
ical changes, it should perhaps come as no surprise that Fukuyamist
triumphalism was—at bare minimum—premature. Whether these devel-
opments should be praised or condemned is of course another ques-
tion, and the authors will be addressing whether a restored economic left
should be welcomed. The second objective of the book is to put modern
socialism and liberalism into renewed dialogue with another to examine
whether the two can coexist peacefully, or even reach an overlapping
consensus on social reform going forward. This will require an intense
look at the history and theory of both liberalism and socialism to deter-
mine points of overlap and tension, in addition to a cross-disciplinary
interpretive analysis of the present epoch to determine how both tradi-
tions have evolved since the twentieth century. Needless to say, neither
liberalism nor socialism are static terms, and each is overdetermined in
popular discourse. Renewed dialogues can also serve the useful exegetical
purpose of clarifying what each means in a (post)-modern context, and
 Introduction xi

potentially do away with some of the conceptual morass and hyperbole

that inexorably surrounds these questions whenever they are invoked in
the public sphere.
This book is divided into three major sections who will be tackling
the two objectives from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary
perspectives. The first section will include three essays by legal theorists
who will examine the conceptions of law and rights operative in both
the liberal and socialist traditions. The ambition is to provide a rigorous
take on where liberals and socialists differ and agree on how a legal
system should operate and what—if any—rights are worth upholding.
The second section takes a more directly political approach, examining
how liberals and socialists understand politics at a theoretical level. We
have deliberately understood political theory in a broad sense, meaning
the essays not only probe the traditional analytical questions of the state,
legitimacy, and distributive justice. Our contributors will also be theo-
retically examining topics ranging from political emotions to the logic
of sound argumentation. Finally the third section extends the book’s
analysis into the realms of cultural and literary studies. They examine
how liberalism and socialism operate to influence individual’s perceptions
of themselves and their communities, and how this translates into art,
ideology, and other forms of cultural production. Taken in toto, the three
sections provide a panoramic vision of what liberalism and socialism
in the twenty-first century are about, foreground the renewed debate
between them, while highlighting that there may be commonalities in
intention and principle that have been obscured for far too long.
 Contents

Law and Rights in Contemporary Liberalism and

Socialism
What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created Equal?:
Liberalism and Socialism on Basic Rights 3
Matthew McManus
The Conceptual Case for Law as Integrity in Malaysia 31
Ratna Rueban Balasubramaniam
Apostle of Progress, Harbinger of Hope: John Stuart Mill
and the British Political Tradition 73
Richard Mullender

The Political Theory of Liberalism and Socialism in the

21st Century
Can Socialism Allow Open Borders? 109
Jason Brennan and Chris Freiman

xiii
xiv Contents

Marx Was a (Philosophical) Liberal and You Should Be Too 139

Ben Burgis
The Social Empowerment of Equal Chances: Sortition
as a Democratic Bridge Between Liberalism and Socialism 153
Victor Bruzzone

Liberalism, Socialism, and Culture

Disambiguating “Critical Theory” 181
Aaron Hanlon
From Liberal to Leftist Ecopolitics: Searching
for Common Ground Between Capitalism and Climate 199
Erik Tate
The Problem of Woke Capitalism 217
Shalon van Tine
The Liberal Media Would Rather Support a Populist Than
a Socialist 233
Peter Milonas

Index 265
 Notes on Contributors

Ratna Rueban Balasubramaniam is an Associate Professor of Legal

Studies at Carleton University. He has published broadly in top tier
outlets such as the Journal of Law and Society and the Oxford University
Commonwealth Law Journal.
Jason Brennan is a Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics and Public
Policy at Georgetown University. He is the author of numerous acclaimed
books including Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know and
Against Democracy.
Victor Bruzzone is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the
University of Toronto. His research focuses on the intersection between
civic culture and liberal democracy.
Ben Burgis is a Lecturer in Philosophy at Georgia State University. He
is the author of numerous papers on philosophy and the bestselling Give
Them An Argument: Logic for the Left which has sold over 7000 copies.
Chris Freiman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at William and
Marry University.

xv
xvi Notes on Contributors

Aaron Hanlon is an Assistant Professor of English at Colby College. In

addition to his work appearing in public forums such as The Washington
Post, he is the author of A World of Disorderly Notions: Quixote and the
Logic of Exceptionalism.
Matthew McManus is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics at
Whitman College. He is the author of Liberalism and Liberal Rights: A
Critical Legal Argument and The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism among
other books.
Peter Milonas is a Ph.D. Candidate in Social and Political Thought at
York University. He is well known for his work in radio and tv, including
Odyssey Television and CHTO AM.
Richard Mullender is a Professor of Law and Legal Theory at Newcastle
University. He has published extensively on law, rights, and egalitari-
anism in journals such as the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies.
Erik Tate is a Ph.D. Candidate in Humanities at York University. He is
a contributor to the volume What is Post-Modern Conservatism? Essays on
Our Hugely Tremendous Times.
Shalon van Tine is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Mary-
land. She is the author numerous articles on culture and cinema, and is
completing a book Latchkey Kids: A Cultural History of America’s Forgotten
Generation.
 List of Tables

Apostle of Progress, Harbinger of Hope: John Stuart Mill

and the British Political Tradition
Table 1 Mill’s political philosophy:
a liberal-cum-socialist-cum-conservative composition
of characteristics 102
Table 2 Four concepts relevant to Mill’s political philosophy 105

xvii
Law and Rights in Contemporary Liberalism
and Socialism
 What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created
Equal?: Liberalism and Socialism on Basic
Rights
Matthew McManus

Introduction
Contra the conventional wisdom of some conservative commentators
like Jordan Peterson,1 the concept of rights has deep roots in a variety
of non-Western cultures and legal systems.2 Historians such as Lynn

1 See Jordan Peterson. “Religion, Sovereignty, Natural Rights and the Constituent Elements of
Experience.” Archive for the Psychology of Religion, Vol. 28, 2006.
2 See Jack Donelly. Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice: Third Edition (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2013) and Lo Chung-Shu. “A Confucian Approach to Human
Rights.” UNESCO Courier, April 2018. https://en.unesco.org/courier/2018-4/confucian-app
roach-human-rights.
3 See Lynn Hunt. Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York, NY: W. W. Morton a
Company, 2007).
4Samuel Moyn. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2012).

M. McManus (B)
Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA, USA

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

Switzerland AG 2021
M. McManus (ed.), Liberalism and Socialism, Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79537-5_1
4 M. McManus

Hunt3 and Samuel Moyn4 have also done significant work in problema-
tizing the political-theoretical and legalist conceit that even in a Western
context we should uncritically accept the argument that rights more
or less were evented during the early Enlightenment by liberal political
theorists-drawing on a Christian heritage-before becoming enshrined in
law starting in the eighteenth century. Saying all that, there is no doubt
that the specifically liberal interpretation of rights has long enjoyed a
hegemonic status-some would say operating as an ideology of democratic
depoliticization5 -in many developed states and at the international level.
Indeed at the apex of the twentieth century the specifically neoliberal
interpretation of liberal rights-stressing rights to property and insu-
lating the market from democratic pressures-was sufficiently prominent
to aspire to global legalization as the morality of worldwide capitalist
markets.6 The ideological power of liberal rights discourse has been
acknowledged and criticized by socialist and radical commentators for
a very long time, with many following the Marxist line that socialists
have little need for a conception of rights which will invariably be so
beholden to an exploitative status quo.7 This reticence continued from
modernity through to post-modernity.8 However, in the spirit of this
essay collection, I am here going to highlight how the interpretation
of liberal rights as little more than ideological distractions from demo-
cratic socialist politics undervalues the emancipatory potential which
has always been latent in liberalism. This is because at its best liber-
alism, like socialism, is committed to the principle that all are moral
equals. Initial rights perceived to flow from this principle were limited
and tied to conception of negative liberty. This proved inadequate to
respecting the radical potential of a principle of moral equality. Later

5 Slavoj Zizek. “The Obscenity of Human Rights: Violence as Symptom.” May 4, 2006. https://
www.lacan.com/zizviol.htm and Costas Douzinas. The End of Human Rights: Critical Thought
at the Turn of the Century (Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2000).
6 See Jessica Whyte. The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliber-
alism (London, UK: Verso Books, 2019) and Matthew McManus. “Liberal and Democratic
Egalitarian Rights: A Critical Legal Conception.” Law, Culture, and Humanities, Online, 2020.
7 See “On the Jewish Question,” in Karl Marx. Early Writings, trans. Rodney Livingstone
(London, UK: Penguin Classics, 1992).
8 Duncan Kennedy. “The Critique of Rights in Critical Legal Studies,” in Janet Halley and
Wendy Brown. Left Legalism/Left Critique (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002).
 What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created … 5

egalitarian liberals recognized the limitations of classical liberalism in

this regard and pushed for expanding rights to the economic sphere to
secure substantive freedom. In so doing they developed highly sophis-
ticated theories of economic justice which are of tremendous value to
socialists in making a moral case for equality that flows from, rather than
existing in opposition to, foundational liberal principles. Saying that,
I argue that the egalitarian liberals didn’t go as far as socialists needed
them to in acknowledging another dimension of justice required to
respect moral equality for all. In particular, they remained insufficiently
committed to realizing social freedom through enabling the democra-
tization of coercive power structures.9 Egalitarian liberalism intended
to deliver negative and substantive freedom, but often through mecha-
nisms which were removed from interference by the demos—for instance
through courts.10 Respecting the moral equality of all by enabling eman-
cipation for all means respecting a conception of rights committed to
protecting and enhancing negative, substantive and social freedom. This
would also constitute a dramatic break from neoliberal ideology and its
narrow conception of rights, which was not only morally undesirable
but has abetted the emergence of reactionary post-modern conservative
politics which threatens liberals and socialists alike.11

9 The term social freedom is drawn from Axel Honneth. See Axel Honneth. Freedom’s Right:
The Social Foundations of Democratic Life, trans. Joseph Ganahl (New York, NY: Columbia
University Press, 2016) and Axel Honneth. The Idea of Socialism (Medford, MA: Polity Press,
2017).
10 This limitation is also present in my own earlier work on the subject. See the later chapters
of Matthew McManus. Making Human Dignity Central to International Human Rights Law: A
Critical Legal Argument (Cardiff, UK: University of Wales Press, 2019).
11 See Matthew McManus. The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism: Neoliberalism, Post-Modern
Culture, and Reactionary Politics (Gewerbestrasse, SW: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and Matthew
McManus. What Is Post-Modern Conservatism: Essays on Our Hugely Tremendous Times
(Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2019).
6 M. McManus

Part I: Liberalism and Liberal Rights

Classical Liberal Rights and Negative Freedom

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever
any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Govern-
ment, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers
in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety
and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long
established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and
accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed
to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses
and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to
throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future
security…

The Declaration of Independence

The particularly liberal conception of rights got its start from a number
of developments. The breakdown of uniform European Christianity into
a plethora of new creeds necessitated the emergence of a Westphalian
system of inter-state religious tolerance, gradually leading to calls from
figures like Locke for political and social acceptance of pluralism even
 What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created … 7

within the state.12 At the same time the emergence of new commu-
nication technologies—the printing press most notably13 —enabled the
dissemination of written material to a wider audience, facilitating rising
literacy levels and the rise of the bourgeois public sphere.14 As Lynn
Hunt observed in her modern classic Inventing Human Rights, the latter
played an unanticipated role in changing cultural affects. In particular
the availability of novels as a long form peak into the interiority of
subjects generated a stronger sense of both individualism and acceptance
of difference, which played a major role in massaging the acceptance of
liberal rights by the time J.S Mill and others argued for the value of
distinctive “experiments in living”.15 And of course—as socialists were
especially keen to observe—the ascendency of the capitalist market and
the bourgeois class to financial-cultural and later political power necessi-
tated an ideological transition from the stratified hierarchies of feudalism
and absolutism to a more egalitarian and liberal outlook on the part of
significant segments of society.
The figure who best understood and reflected these developments
was Thomas Hobbes, who warrants the title of most significant English
philosopher granted to him by none other than John Rawls.16 This is
because he did more than any other figure to formalize and systematize
the ideological developments taking place in European society, raising
them to an unparalleled level of sophistication and imagistic affect.

12 Carl Schmitt infamously located the origins of liberal religious tolerance in Hobbes rather
than Locke. This was an intriguing interpretation since Hobbes’ sovereign leviathan was to
enforce a shared set of positive law, including insisting on religious uniformity. Schmitt makes
the chilling argument that Hobbes none the less left room for dissidence by permitting indi-
viduals to hold different religious views privately so long as they did not express them publicly.
This testifies to Schmitt’s own fascistic interpretation of the need for a total state to counter
the influence of unstable liberal political theology. See Carl Schmitt. The Leviathan in the State
Theory of Thomas Hobbes (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2008).
13 This is most profoundly analysed in the classic book Marshall McLuhan. The Gutenberg
Galaxy (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2011).
14 Jürgen Habermas. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 1991).
15 Lynn Hunt. Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York, NY: W. W. Morton a Company,
2007).
16 John Rawls. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), at pg 23.
8 M. McManus

Hobbes’ contribution to the formulation of liberal rights was signifi-

cant since he anticipated later conceptual innovations and the unending
critiques which have since been levelled at them—most particularly the
argument that without a state to enforce a given conception of rights,
they become ineffective. This relates to his innovative meta-ethical posi-
tion. As Richard Tuck observes Hobbes’ is almost a meta-ethical relativist
in the state of nature; everything is permitted to everyone so long as
they can achieve it.17 Interestingly, Hobbes connects this to a well-known
argument for the fundamental equality of all human beings. He observes
that even the strongest individual in the state of nature is irreparably
vulnerable; unable to enforce their will-including a moral conception-
upon even the weak for an extended period of time. In other words
human beings in the state of nature are not only in a state of meta-
ethical relativism, but this is tied to their natural equality in strength and
intelligence.
But as is well known, Hobbes also acknowledges that this situation
is unacceptable. It raises the potential of the violent warre of all against
all without any transcendent reason which can mollify such an unhappy
condition. In Leviathan, Hobbes goes on to raise a number of different
arguments to suggest why self-interested relativists would move from
the state of nature into the state. Some of the arguments have a utili-
tarian flavour, others are at best prudential, and some anticipate the more
sophisticated iterations of contractualism which would emerge in the
twentieth century. The latter are the most interesting for our purposes.
Hobbes argues that it is a “natural law” that all men should seek peace,
and also a natural law that they keep their covenants made. This leads
him to the contractualist claim that prudent utility maximizers in the
state of nature will contract out their limitless liberty to all things for an
exclusive liberty to some things guaranteed by the power of the sovereign
leviathan. Later liberal thinkers would draw on rights discourse to specify
precisely which liberties it is most important for the state to uphold, and
would reach the conclusion that it was the so-called negative liberties.

17Richard Tuck. Hobbes: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
2002).
 What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created … 9

In essence that state’s obligation was to respect negative rights to non-

coercion, except where it was necessary to prevent private individuals
from unduly coercing one another. In other words the liberal state was
to assume a monopoly on the legitimate use of force precisely to inhibit
others from using force—except in highly prescribed circumstances-to
protect citizens’ rights to maximal negative liberty. Nowhere was this
better expressed than in William Blackstone’s classic formulation about
the association of law and liberty. As put in his Commentaries on the Laws
of England :

The absolute rights of man, considered as a free agent, endowed with

discernment to know good from evil, and with power of choosing those
measures which appear to him to be most desirable, are usually summed
up in one general appellation, and denominated the natural liberty of
mankind. This natural liberty consists properly in a power of acting as one
thinks fit, without any restraint or control, unless by the law of nature;
being a right inherent in us by birth, and one of the gifts of God to man
at his creation, when he endued him with the faculty of free will. But
every man, when he enters into society, gives up a part of his natural
liberty, as the price of so valuable a purchase; and, in consideration of
receiving the advantages of mutual commerce, obliges himself to conform
to those laws, which the community has thought proper to establish. And
this species of legal obedience and conformity is infinitely more desirable
than that wild and savage liberty which is sacrificed to obtain it. For
no man that considers a moment would wish to retain the absolute and
uncontrolled power of doing whatever he pleases: the consequence of
which is, that every other man would also have the same power, and then
there would be no security to individuals in any of the enjoyments of life.
Political, therefore, or civil liberty, which is that of a member of society,
is no other than natural liberty so far restrained by human laws (and no
farther) as is necessary and expedient for the general advantage of the
public.18

18 William Blackstone. Commentaries on the Laws of England in Four Books. Online Library
of Liberty, April 13, 2016. https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/blackstone-on-the-absolute-rights-
of-individuals-1753.
10 M. McManus

This reflects a profound paradox at the heart of liberal rights discourse

and legal-political theory more generally, which has been exploited by
the opponents of liberalism ever since. To invoke Patrick Deneen,19
the paradox is that the demand for negative liberty and classical liberal
rights led to the subsequent demand for a massive state apparatus. In a
more Marxist vein, we also have to observe how the calls for “liberty”
of exchange contributed to the violent imposition of imperial recon-
struction across the vast swathe of the globe—and beyond in the late
twentieth century! In part we have to recognize that this paradox was
an inevitable consequence of the immanent tensions within liberalism
at the level of ideas. Henry Shue, Amartya Sen and others pointed out
that generally respecting even basic liberal rights to negative liberties, for
instance to a fair trial, requires the state do more than simply refrain
from coercion except where necessary to preserve other’s negative liber-
ties. The state must also establish a complex legal apparatus to settle
disputes peacefully, and provide resources to the poor to ensure they can
be defended adequately lest the wrong disputant succeed merely because
they are better funded. At the material level there is also the ironic
acknowledgement that “free-markets” seen as integral to negative liberty
could not exist in a truly free state of nature. They required the enforce-
ment of a wide variety of capitalist mechanisms, from stratified property
rights encased from public pressure and unionization, to the use of the
state to break open traditionalist communities for exploitation by market
actors—even using military force where necessary—and the elimina-
tion of the “commons” down to the privatization of public institutions
which carries on to this day. Classical liberalism has always struggled
to acknowledge this inability to resolve its own paradoxes before they
become lethal Marxist contradictions without turning to the state; iron-
ically something many conservative commentators from Burke onwards
were better aware of than their liberal peers.
At another level there was a positive dimension to the paradoxes which
emerged which should be welcomed by many progressives. Namely that
the principle of moral equality invoked by Hobbes in the state of nature

19See Patrick Deneen. “Unsustainable Liberalism.” First Things, August 2012 and Patrick
Deneen. Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2018).
 What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created … 11

always sat uncomfortably next to the extreme inequalities of fact classical

liberals were all too happy to tolerate and even celebrate where it was
to their class advantage. Particularly when combined with an account
of human flourishing which deliberately eschewed Aristotelian teleology
and stressed that liberty emancipation from the state of nature through
instituting the rights respecting state was integrally connected to human
happiness. This is because the happy life was one of prosperity and the
right to do as one wished without interference from another, to pursue
his one’s own conception of the good life one’s own way. The egalitarian
dimension of this was twofold. Firstly, the abandonment of teleolog-
ical conceptions of the good meant that it was no longer possible to
argue that some people’s flourishing was more important than others.
Since all had a right to pursue their own vision of the good life, the
cultural impetus traced by Tocqueville and others moved in the direc-
tion of stressing that no one’s vision of the good life was any better than
another’s. Or if it was, making such determinations was to be carried out
in private and was no longer a fit subject for political morality. Second,
and more important, if each person’s conception of the good life was as
valid as anyone else’s, it led to growing discontent with a democratic
state which seemed to prioritize rights associated with negative liber-
ties which were primarily to the advantage of the capitalist classes. If
it was the case that the poor were as entitled to the freedom to pursue
their vision of the good life as anyone else, didn’t that mean that a state
which was to serve everyone should not only permit that but enable it?
In other words shouldn’t people be empowered by the redistribution of
resources from the rich to the least well off, who were inhibited by their
lack of resources? This position became increasingly popular through the
twentieth century as democracy and the protection of negative liber-
ties facilitated the rise of working class movements and political parties
demanding reform. Philosophically the consequence was the emergence
of egalitarian liberalism.
12 M. McManus

Egalitarian Liberalism and the Rights

of the Least Well Off
The movement from classical liberalism and liberal rights to a more egal-
itarian outlook is well expressed in the work of J.S Mill. Mill remains
the most articulate defender of negative liberty in the canon, often held
up as the emblematic classical liberal. Yet late in his intellectual career
he struggled considerably with the objections of socialists; coming to the
conclusion that while the basic political economic structure of produc-
tion should remain the same, there might be compelling consequentialist
reasons to redistribute the wealth produced to help the less fortunate.20
This theoretical ambiguity prefaced the dramatic shifts which took place
in liberal democratic polities beginning in the late nineteenth and rapidly
expanding in the twentieth century, where the state began to assume
ever greater responsibility for ensuring the welfare of all citizens. As well
traced by the economic historian Thomas Piketty, these shifts accelerated
in the aftermath of the Second World War, which liquidated traditional
hierarchies and generated mass transfers of capital from capitalists to
the state to effectively fight an existential war against fascism.21 The
end result in practice was the emergence of social-democratic welfare
states in many developed countries, often associated with the legalization
of socio-economic rights in new constitutions such as West Germany’s,
the French Fourth Republic, the Republic of India and in international
documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
International Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights. These

20 This of course seems an inevitable consequence of Mills’ utilitarianism, which does not
easily permit dramatic disparities in wealth if they are not obviously utility maximizing. The
pull of egalitarianism for utilitarians has always been strong-consider the radical altruism of
Peter Singer today-and various responses have been given, primarily by rule utilitarians, to try
and compromise with the arguments of political economists that simply distributing goods to
ensure the greatest happiness for the greatest number would eventually produce disincentives to
economic activity. This is one of the reasons Richard Posner would eventually insist that one
distinguish between wealth and utility maximization, rather than conflating the two resulting
in the troublesome theorizing that befell Bentham and Mill. See Richard Posner. The Economics
of Justice: Second Edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).
21 See Thomas Piketty. Capital and Ideology (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2020) and Thomas Piketty. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur
Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014).
 What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created … 13

practical elements were echoed in the dramatic reorientation which took

place in liberal political and legal thinkers, as a new generation of
philosophers and theorists sought to marry basic liberal insights with the
new welfarist status quo.
The most important of these authors was undoubtedly John Rawls,
who did more than anyone else to enact a new way of approaching
distributive justice from a liberal standpoint. Rawls draws very heavily on
the principle of moral equality to contend for a political theory he calls
“justice as fairness”. Carrying forward a fundamentally Kantian contrac-
tarian mode of reasoning and giving it a more empirical cast, Rawls asks
us to imagine a scenario where hypothetical reasoners behind a “veil of
ignorance” in the “original position” are asked to deliberate and decide
upon the basic principles which will determine the basic structure of
society. Behind the veil of ignorance, each of these parties is motivated
by a desire to pursue their self-interest by acquiring an adequate share of
social goods and honours. Among the most important of these are the
social bases of self-respect, which includes equal recognition as citizens,
and equality of basic rights and liberties compatible with everyone else’s,
fair equality of opportunity, and most controversially adequate resources
for the pursuit of our life’s plans. Behind the veil of ignorance reasoners
are also unaware of many of the concrete features of their life, which
means they must deliberate from a “position of equality” with everyone
else. This is because the reasoners cannot know whether they will be
advantaged of disadvantaged by belonging to a privileged or marginal-
ized group depending on the principles they choose, and so will have
a serious incentive to choose fair principles which would be accept-
able to all. Rawls concludes that they would consequently choose two
principles, ranked in lexical order. The first is an equal scheme of basic
liberties for all compatible with the same scheme for everyone else. And
the second is that social and economic inequalities are to be arranged
so that are attached to offices and positions open to all under condi-
tions of fair equality of opportunity, and to the greatest benefit of the
least well off. The second is the most important, since it requires that
a just liberal society prioritize not wealth or utility maximization but
care for its least advantaged so long as such efforts don’t compromise the
basic liberties of citizens. If accepted, justice as fairness would provide
14 M. McManus

rich theoretical guidelines for incorporating socio-economic rights into

a constitutional legal framework. The lexical ranking of the principles of
justice would also facilitate how such rights would be balanced against
the more traditional negative rights prioritized by classical liberals.
Rawls’ theoretical revolution inspired generations of liberal egalitar-
ians to offer engaging defences of socio-economic rights and distributive
justices, often leaning very heavily on the principle of moral equality.
For Ronald Dworkin, egalitarian liberalism flows from the principle that
law must show “equal respect” to its subjects.22 Thomas Pogge takes a
more internationalist institution to argue that global rules and practices
must give “equal consideration” to every human being on the planet.23
Martha Nussbaum affirms that all human beings have “equal dignity and
worth” and so is entitled to the same capabilities required to lead a life of
flourishing.24 Each of these figures accounts for moral equality and what
it requires in a different way, but respect for the fundamental principle
remains constant.
Of course, this innovation was always looked upon with scepticism
by the radical left. On occasion, these were driven largely by age-old
animosities and simple hostility to even the idea of liberalism, which
warrants minimal respect.25 In other respects, there were serious limita-
tions to object to. The most obvious was the very constrained conception
of social freedom which was still present in egalitarian liberal theory.
The egalitarian liberals were far more willing than their classical coun-
terparts to move away from negative liberty and the associated rights
to theorize on the substantive liberty which could be secured through
socio-economic rights. But they retained much of their counterpart’s
scepticism towards the importance of democratizing life by expanding

22 Ronald Dworkin. Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2002).
23 Thomas Pogge. “Concluding Reflections,” in Cosmopolitanism Versus Non-Cosmopolitanism,
ed. G. Brock (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), at pgs 294–320.
24 Martha Nussbaum. Sex and Social Justice (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000), at
pg 57.
25 A good example would be the analytical Marxist G.A Cohen’s critique of Rawls, which
ironically has some strange Nozickian undertones in its insistence that ownership flows from
labour and appropriating it is wrong. See Graham Paul. Rawls: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford,
UK: Oneworld Publishers, 2007).
 What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created … 15

the extent to which citizens could be authors of the laws which governed
them, let alone extending democracy to a wider array of spheres of
life. Indeed a frustrating number were gently hostile to the very idea;
with Rawls and Dworkin, in particular, having far more faith in the
importance of courts than the demos. They often limit acceptable public
involvement—even in politics, let alone elsewhere—to participation in
the vague “public sphere” which rather drably includes spending a lot
of time contemplating the top-down decisions of the Supreme Court.26
This limited endorsement of democracy provoked many critiques by
deliberative democrats and leftists, many of whom rightly argued that
without the democratization of different spheres of life and the expan-
sion of social freedom the fragile achievements of liberal egalitarian
welfarism27 would very much be under threat from renewed interfer-
ence by capital.28 And of course this turned out not to be a purely
academic objection. With the election of neoliberal governments in the

26 In particular Dworkin’s theory of law as integrity, when married to his egalitarian liberal
arguments, was very much to be a Judge driven activity. There is a pronounced sense in which
his outlook was very much shaped by the liberal period of the Warren Court, which was very
much an anomalous interval for the typically conservative orientation of the Scotus. This made
his bewilderment at the Court’s conservative turn post-Reagan all the more bewildering. See
Ronald Dworkin “The Decision that Threatens Democracy.” The New York Review of Books,
May 13, 2010.
27 The most powerful objection to this position was Nozick’s, particularly circa his famous Wilt
Chamberlain thought experiment. The basic argument is that, even given initial equality of
conditions, free transactions between individuals will eventually produce or reproduce inequal-
ities. Chamberlain receiving a small stipend to pay basketball each game by basketball fans
will eventually make him rich. One way to object to this is in a Hegelian vein; few have
ever objected to the small scale inequities produced by microeconomic transactions of the
sort captured in Nozick’s innovative thought experiment. But there is a qualitative shift which
accompanies the quantitative shift from basketball games and players to actually existent capi-
talism. Few of us complain about the one-day monopoly on fresh lemonade 10 year old Annie
created on my street when she and her dog Sparky set up a juice stand. That doesn’t preclude
us from complaining about the gross mistreatment of workers at a Del Monte plant in Costa
Rica, where even political and citizen authority may be subordinated to corporate interest in
a neoliberal world. This tendency to fixate on quaint micro-economic transactions to defend
libertarian positions has a long history; the market protagonists of figures like Nozick are always
basketball players, flower shops, and mom and pop organizations. Never macroeconomic power
players from Enron, the Trump Organization, or the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation. Analogously
nineteenth century socialists never had much issue with the butcher, the brewer, or the baker
but with a system of political economy producing a surplus of Edward Murdstones.
28 See Axel Honneth. Freedom’s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life, trans. Joseph
Ganahl (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2016) and Axel Honneth. The Idea of
Socialism (Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2017).
16 M. McManus

1980s, there was a concerted effort to marginalize or even roll back

democratization efforts across the globe to insulate capital from public
pressure. This included everything from the privatization of public insti-
tutions, union rollbacks, voter suppression techniques deployed with
surgical intention across the United States and other countries, struc-
tural adjustment programs in developing states, the establishment of
international institutions committed to enforcing neoliberal economic
policies—even against the will of sovereign states, streamlining the influ-
ence of money in politics and so on.29 As a consequence the demos
was increasingly incapable of maintaining the (modest) welfare states
that had been achieved through the mid-twentieth century. Inequality
and precarity began increasing again, until in the present day it has
reached levels unheard of since before the Second World War during
the so-called Gilded Age.30 Unsurprisingly many were unprepared to
accept the new status quo, with the result being a dramatic push back
against neoliberalism starting in the 2010s. This included the rise of
post-modern conservatism as a political force with global reach, but also
the ascendency of new forms of millennial socialism as a progressive
force opposed to both neoliberalism and ethnocentrism.31 Many clas-
sical liberal commentators like Jonah Goldberg looked at both with equal
horror and revulsion.32 But in the final section of this paper, I will argue
that socialism is eminently compatible with liberalism, to the extent both
are committed to moral equality. Moreover, this would resolve one of
the major paradoxes of the liberal state discussed earlier if carried out in
the right way. But it can only do this by securing not just negative and
substantive, but also social freedom.

29 Wendy Brown. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn, NY: Zone
Books, 2015).
30 Thomas Piketty. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge,
MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014).
31 See Matthew McManus. The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism: Neoliberalism, Post-Modern
Culture, and Reactionary Politics (Gewerbestrasse, SW: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and Matthew
McManus. What Is Post-Modern Conservatism: Essays on Our Hugely Tremendous Times
(Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2019).
32 See Jonah Goldberg. Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Nationalism, and
Socialism Is Destroying American Democracy (New York, NY: Crown Forum, 2019).
 What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created … 17

Part II: Socialism and Rights Discourse

Socialism, the Left, and Liberal Rights

A deepened, high-energy democracy does not seek to replace the real

world of interests and of interest-bearing individuals with the selfless
citizen and with the all-consuming theatre of public life. It is not a
flight into republican purism and fantasy. It wants to enhance our
ordinary powers, enlarge the scope of our ordinary sympathies and ambi-
tions, and render more intense our ordinary experience. It seeks to do
so by diminishing the distance between the ordinary moves we may
within institutional and ideological contexts take for granted and the
extraordinary initiatives by which we challenge and change pieces of
those contexts. Its agent and its beneficiary are one and the same: the
real thing—the frail, self-interested, longing individual in the flesh, the
victim of circumstance whom no circumstance can ever completely or
definitively confine.

Roberto Unger, The Left Alternative

Socialist critiques of liberalism and liberal rights flourished in earnest

starting in the nineteenth century and have been a persistent feature
of political discourse ever since, though it wouldn’t be until Marx
that a truly systematic objection was formulated. Some of the earliest
proponents of proto-socialist doctrines such as William Godwin and
Thomas Paine were cognizant of the intellectual debt they owed to
liberalism, while at the same time hammering bourgeois liberals for self-
serving calls for participatory government except qualified by extensive
limitations based on property rights. This reflects a liberal democratic
core to the early socialist movement which was occasionally lost in
the economism of the nineteenth century. The early figures who self-
consciously styled themselves as radicals and socialists responded to the
undeniable vulgarities and inequities of early industrial society, extending
the pro-democratic and anti-elitist critiques of Paine and Godwin to the
economic sphere and demanding radical redistributions of wealth and
18 M. McManus

power. Many of these calls took the form of straightforward moral argu-
ments drawing from different traditions; from Rousseaun romanticism to
Benthamite rationalism on the part of Robert Owen. And of course left-
Hegelian historicism. Many of these figures, Proudhon and Paine most
notably, were quite willing to invoke rights discourse—including natural
rights discourse—to justify their positions. Their arguments were typi-
cally that the alignment of state power with the interests of the capitalist
class inhibited the democratic participation of the vast majority of citi-
zens, which morally necessitated liberation from both the state and the
inequalities which engendered disparities in power.
Marx and Engels famously disputed these claims, labelling them
utopian, ahistorical, and by the time of the Anti-Duhring even (the
horror) “unscientific”. As early as his “On the Jewish Question” Marx
deployed his formidable rhetorical and intense intellectual powers against
left-Hegelian reformers like Bruno Bauer, who put their faith in the
liberal state and the so-called “rights of man”. While Marx and Engels
never developed a fully comprehensive theory of the state, his short hand
characterization of it as a “committee for the managing of the common
affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” and a superstructural development
rising from a real economic base have remained tremendously influen-
tial. By the time Marx formulated these positions, the radical potential
earlier socialists occasionally detected in rights discourse had reached a
dead end. Many liberal democratic polities had enshrined liberal rights
into formal or common law constitutions, but seemingly remained
aloof from the more radical calls for democratic and economic change
demanded by the left. This led Marx to famously call for abandoning
rights discourse in favour of the hard rigour of dialectical materialism
and what Althusser called the “science of history”, which held that the
immanent contradictions within liberal capitalism would eventually lead
to its inevitable overthrow and replacement with a far higher form of
society. The ascendency of Marxism as the dominant mode of analysis
on the radical left—at least until the rise of welfarism and later liberal
egalitarianism and the New Left—also generated deep suspicion towards
a straightforward moral critique of the type favoured by proponents of
rights discourse. Instead the goal of critique was to continuously develop
accounts of the fresh contradictions immanent within liberal capitalism
 What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created … 19

and sharpen them conceptually so they seemed sufficiently lethal that

the established order was facing imminent collapse. Later critical theo-
rists in the vein of Adorno, Marcuse and Fromm wisely abandoned the
teleological Messiahanism of early Marxism by accepting that there was
no obvious reason why seven sharp contradictions would lead to collapse
and thence inexorably to communism or socialism. Capitalism or aristo-
cratic feudalism might simply give way to new forms of statism or even
a more dynamic “late capitalism”. None the less this didn’t lead critical
theorists with socialist sympathies to suddenly rush back to straightfor-
ward moral argumentation, which for many must have seemed like a
regression to a pre-Marxist mode of critique which was ahistorical and
could well come across as mere impotent pleading for reform directed
against entrenched power which had little interest or need to reform
itself.
There are obvious reasons why one might want to reject moral critique
all those put forward by rights discourse. At an intellectual level, the most
obvious is one can evade the many philosophical and practical prob-
lems which come from making normative claims in a secular era. This
has of course not precluded many figures, including liberal egalitarians,
from putting forward moral arguments of remarkable sophistication. But
these are always easier to dismiss than an argument that purports to
merely describe actually existent social phenomena, and in the case of
orthodox Marxism to predict what is inevitably going to come whether
one wills it or not. Another reason one might be sceptical or normative
critique is a rejection of its capacity to actually enact meaningful change.
There is a sustained streak of dispositional33 political realism in many
socialist and post-structuralist accounts which cashes itself out in scep-
ticism and even disdain towards anyone naïve enough to suppose moral
argument about rights could actually meaningfully change the operations
of power. Finally there are militant particularists who reject any kind

33 I say dispositional since progressive commentators will rarely directly affiliate with political
realism and its conservative interpretation of the world and invariably hierarchical and organized
by power. None the less there is often an implicit acceptance of this claim in some of the more
pessimistic strains of left wing critique, from Adorno through Foucault. This has led even some
sympathetic readers to raise their hands in frustration. See Thomas Lemke. Foucault’s Analysis of
Modern Governmentality: A Critique of Political Reason, trans. Erik Butler (London, UK: Verso
Books, 2019).
20 M. McManus

of moral argumentation—especially those about rights—as unforgivably

universalistic and actually anti-democratic.34 Those who put forward
moral arguments risk generating new ideological and discursive justifi-
cations for disciplinary marginalization through precluding individuals
and communicates who hold different views.
I think each of these is misguided, albeit in different ways. We must
invariably assume the burdens of moral judgement and cannot evade
them by appealing to either descriptive historicism and realism or new
forms of scepticism and particularism. As subjects embedded in a world
which we existentially care about, we consequently develop justificatory
reasons for why our moral beliefs are correct. These may be drawn from
the semantics of the lifeworld, or reflectively distilled through philosoph-
ical argumentation until the reasons assume a status approximating that
of a quasi-cognitive Platonic form akin to mathematics; moral reasons
may emerge from deliberation and reflection on the semantic resources
of the lifeworld, but a sufficiently refined set of moral reasons has suffi-
cient validity to be independently valid to rational beings outside their
humble origins in human cognition and social life. More basically any
argument for liberalism or socialism which tries to evade the burdens of
moral judgement will ultimately be unconvincing, since it cannot offer
strong normative reasons for why we should welcome a given social form
over another. Indeed one of the critiques of orthodox Marxism which
is still compelling today is the teleological insistence that the inevitable
fall of capitalism would lead to communism contained an implicit and
not very sophisticated faith that such a movement would be a moral
improvement. Often this was justified along Hegelian lines since history
was a narrative of expanding freedom through recognition of the other as
an equal, freedom and equal recognition were assumed to be good, and
so the more free and equal society to come must inevitably be better.
But this of course doesn’t immediately follow. Given a different moral
outlook one could even agree, like Schumpeter and possibly Max Weber
that socialism was inevitable and yet not be welcomed. The argument
that it should be welcomed therefore needs to operate at a moral level

34David Harvey. Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell
Publishing, 1996).
 What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created … 21

to give us sufficiently compelling reasons to indeed see it as an improve-

ment on the liberal capitalist status quo. To mind this should take the
form of argument that expanding both substantive and social freedom
would indeed be a just development.

Arguing for Liberal Socialism as the Fulfilment

of Substantive and Social Freedom
Any such argument must, contra the rhetoric of some on the left, draw
on the theoretical and cultural resources of liberalism. This is because one
needs to show both how the expansion of freedom is a moral good, and
subsequently that we have a duty to go beyond liberalism and even liberal
egalitarianism through a well thought out expansion of social freedom.
The full articulation of such a position would go well beyond the purview
of this essay. But in brief I think the principle of moral equality requires
that the state and international institutions show equal concern to the
lives of each of its citizens and other relevant subjects, being responsive
to their interests and enabling the pursuit of their life plans. Showing
equal concern to all would mean organizing the distribution of power
and capability in our society along very different lines than what we see
today, where some enjoy a tremendous capacity to both influence the
world and to meaningfully pursue their life plans without interference
or precarity but billions do not.
There are some who would argue that showing equal concern does
not require any such redistributive efforts beyond those required by
establishing formal equality before the law. This was the classical liberal
position. It was predicated on the belief that beyond establishing formal
equality of the law, respecting freedom meant simply allowing individ-
uals to do as they will in a competitive marketplace where they rose
and fell on their own merits. Beyond the intrinsic problems of moral
arbitrariness detected by Rawls in any account of merit, the immanent
consequence of this was the earlier mentioned tensions within the liberal
democratic state which always threatened to mutate into lethal Marxist
contradictions. Conservative critics like Deneen were correct that clas-
sical liberalism was always bound to generate a massive state apparatus
22 M. McManus

to enable greater freedom. What these critics missed was how inequities
in power and wealth ensured that this state would service only a select
group, while ignoring and even marginalizing the rest. The profound
insight of orthodox Marxism was that the freedoms promised by clas-
sical liberalism would inevitably end up being meaningfully enjoyed
only by a few, while the rest of us would be facing them as an oppres-
sive ideology working against our real emancipation. The welfarist and
liberal egalitarian solution to this problem was technocratic; to insist that
it could be resolved by top-down statism and redistributive politics to
enhance substantive freedom. But as already mentioned this solution
largely neglected how any success along these lines would be inher-
ently fragile unless it was backed up by a concurrent democratization of
different spheres of life, to prevent the power of capital from regrouping
and enacting a counter-reformation along the lines of neoliberalization.
This testified to the wisdom found in early socialist authors, who perhaps
facing more overt forms of statist oppression recognized the danger of
faith in statist technocracy unless continuously directed by the demos.35
Given this, we need to push past the limitations of the liberal egal-
itarian outlook, but in a way that is respectful of their considerable
theoretical accomplishments. Liberal egalitarianism needs to give way to
a form of liberal socialism that democratizes different spheres of life to
corrode entrenched power structures while at the same time engaging in
redistributive efforts required to ensure everyone is capable of living a life
of dignity. My argument for this is not dialectical but a straightforwardly
moral case for the state and international institutions demonstrating
equal concern to all citizens and other subjects, drawing in a deep way
from the liberal principle of moral equality. There is no dialectical or
other necessity for such a transition to take place, which means that left-
ists cannot put their faith in an inexorable logic of history to carry us to
victory. Nor can we assume that the more post-modern tasks of genealog-
ically unmasking the disciplinary underpinning of dominant discourses
or rejuvenating the critique of ideology will be sufficient to inspire people

35For an acute analysis of this phenomena see Wendy Brown. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The
Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2019)
and Wendy Brown. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn, NY: Zone
Books, 2015).
 What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created … 23

to embrace egalitarianism once their false idols fall. If liberal socialism is

to be achieved, it will be because it proves sufficiently compelling to the
demos on its own terms. At a minimum, it must inspire the demos to
make political and cultural demands for such a change.
This highlights the efficacy of regarding liberal socialism as less of a
break with liberalism than a completion of the liberal project. The histor-
ical project of liberalism of establishing a society of free moral equals
would be completed when each individual enjoys comparable negative,
substantive, and social freedom to all others except where deviations are
justifiable and to the benefit of the least well off. Moreover, the clas-
sical liberal effort to impose constraints on the illegitimate exercise of
state power—for instance the constraints imposed by rights—would be
expanded through imposing constraints on post-modern capitalist forms
of decentralized governance. This socialism would be liberal in a deeper
sense as well, since it would enable the mass of individuals to engage
more meaningfully in what J.S Mill characterized as “experiments in
living”.36 Billions of people around the world are highly constrained in
their capacity to experiment either in their own lives or in developing
forms of collective life because of a lack of resources and the calcifica-
tion of power structures resistant to change. Shifting to a liberal socialist
society where resources are available to all and the constraints imposed
by what Roberto Unger rightly called the false necessity of both state and
capitalist power would make these people far more capable of engaging
in experiments of living.37 In turn all would benefit from the expan-
sive pluralism of experiments and identities which developed, serving as
examples and models for other’s to emulate or reject depending on their
interests and moral visions of the good life.
This brings me to the issue of rights in a liberal socialist society. In
a liberal socialist society, the set of rights accepted by classical liberals
committed to negative freedom and the socio-economic rights associated
with substantive freedom would be complemented by rights to social

36 John Stuart Mill. On Liberty and Other Essays, ed. John Gray (Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press, 2008).
37 Roberto Unger. Politics Volume One: False Necessity (London, UK: Verso Press, 2004).
24 M. McManus

freedom. Liberal socialist rights would include all the classical nega-
tive liberties—to expression, religion, privacy, assembly and so on—with
the notable exception of accepting an expansive conception of prop-
erty rights. To the extent more than personal private property would be
acceptable, it would have to be because inequities flow from factors that
are not morally arbitrary and work to the benefit of the least well off. This
is because substantive freedom for all would be secured through redis-
tributive efforts protected in law through a robust set of socio-economic
rights. This would include rights to healthcare, housing, education and
life necessities among others. Finally, social freedom would be secured by
entrenching democratic rights in law and ensuring they applied in many
different spheres of life; particularly those where there is a serious risk of
power re-entrenching itself. An example would be a right for worker’s to
contribute to the democratic management of the means of production,
along the lines of worker cooperatives such as the Mondragon Corpora-
tion. Citizens would also have rights to participate more meaningfully in
state and international politics through forms of direct democracy such
as referendums, agitation by civil society groups and the establishment
of deliberative forums enabling and enhancing their capacity for expres-
sion. Finally, one could work to establish what Jurgen Habermas calls
“chains” of democratic legitimation between the domestic and interna-
tional levels, to ensure the demos has more of a say in the operation of
international legal systems. This would not only be justified on principle,
but could help rebut the frequent accusation of post-modern conserva-
tives that such international legal systems and institutions are elitist and
removed from the communities they seek to govern.38

Conclusion
There are many objections one might raise to liberal socialism; particu-
larly from the political right. In the interest of space, I will not address

38 Jurgen Habermas. The Crisis of the European Union: A Response, trans. Ciaran
Cronin (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2012) and Jürgen Habermas. The Divided West, trans. (London,
UK: Polity Press, 2006).
 What Does It Mean to Say All Are Created … 25

those here. Instead, I will speak to progressives who may find much of
what I call for here appealing, but who are repelled by any sense of
continuity with liberalism and who are allergic to the very invocation of
rights discourse. For some of these figures, despising liberalism vacillates
between being a serious hobby and a creed that cannot be abandoned.
But I feel this is largely counterproductive, since many of these same
figures unsparingly deploy the grammar of equality and emancipation
which emerged from the liberal tradition at its best. Cannier analysts
such as Karl Marx were well aware that there was both a conceptual
connection between emancipation from capital and emancipation from
political domination, which made it possible to conceive of a dialectical
transition from liberalism to a higher form of society. Liberal socialism
would be a higher form of society, but not one so far removed from our
present experience that it would appear unattainable or starkly divergent
from our everyday experience. As a good millennial socialist like Bhaskar
Sunkara knows, it is both theoretically and practically more effective to
talk about “5 min after capitalism” than an entirely new historical form
which even proponents struggle to define without appealing to impen-
etrable jargon and scarcely concealed romantic idealism.39 For some
progressives what is problematic is not so much that liberal socialism
seems too beholden to liberalism, but that it reflects a universalistic polit-
ical view that runs the risk of excluding other points of view. I have
already mentioned that, pushed too far, I find such arguments uncon-
vincing efforts to ineffectively evade the burden of moral judgement;
all while claiming to be at the forefront of a radical politics no less!
But I should also stress that liberal socialism is not intended to be a
static political form established once and for all. Its emphasis on social
freedom is intended to clear the path for the demos, including individ-
uals from historically marginalized backgrounds, to have a far more direct
and powerful influence on the makeup of society. It is to be dynamic and
responsive, with citizens and others deliberating upon the best forms
of life. Liberated from the false necessity of power and the restrictions
of material precarity, they can engage in countless robust experiments

39 Bhaskar Sunkara. The Socialist Manifesto (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2020).
26 M. McManus

in living both individually and collectively. Such a super liberal society

would not only be freer, but express a commitment to the moral equality
of all which our society falls far short of.

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Austin.—Before leaving Eastern Texas behind us, I must add a
random note or two, the dates of which it would have been uncivil to
indicate.
We stopped one night at the house of a planter, now twenty years
settled in Eastern Texas. He was a man of some education and
natural intelligence, and had, he told us, an income, from the labour
of his slaves, of some $4,000. His residence was one of the largest
houses we had seen in Texas. It had a second story, two wings and
a long gallery. Its windows had been once glazed, but now, out of
eighty panes that originally filled the lower windows, thirty only
remained unbroken. Not a door in the house had been ever
furnished with a latch or even a string; when they were closed, it was
necessary to claw or to ask some one inside to push open. (Yet we
happened to hear a neighbour expressing serious admiration of the
way these doors fitted.) The furniture was of the rudest description.
One of the family had just had a hæmorrhage of the lungs; while we
were at supper, this person sat between the big fireplace and an
open outside door, having a window, too, at his side, in which only
three panes remained. A norther was blowing, and ice forming upon
the gallery outside. Next day at breakfast, the invalid was unable to
appear on account of a “bad turn.”
On our supper-table was nothing else than the eternal fry, pone and
coffee. Butter, of dreadful odour, was here added by exception.
Wheat flour they never used. It was “too much trouble.”
We were waited upon by two negro girls, dressed in short-waisted,
twilled-cotton gowns, once white, now looking as if they had been
worn by chimney-sweeps. The water for the family was brought in
tubs upon the heads of these two girls, from a creek, a quarter of a
mile distant, this occupation filling nearly all their time.
This gentleman had thirty or forty negroes, and two legitimate sons.
One was an idle young man. The other was, at eight years old, a
swearing, tobacco-chewing bully and ruffian. We heard him whipping
a puppy behind the house, and swearing between the blows, his
father and mother being at hand. His language and tone was an
evident imitation of his father’s mode of dealing with his slaves.
“I’ve got an account to settle with you; I’ve let you go about long
enough; I’ll teach you who’s your master; there, go now, God damn
you, but I havn’t got through with you yet.”
“You stop that cursing,” said his father, at length, “it isn’t right for little
boys to curse.”
“What do you do when you get mad?” replied the boy; “reckon you
cuss some; so now you’d better shut up.”

In the whole journey through Eastern Texas, we did not see one of
the inhabitants look into a newspaper or a book, although we spent
days in houses where men were lounging about the fire without
occupation. One evening I took up a paper which had been lying
unopened upon the table of the inn where we were staying, and
smiled to see how painfully news items dribbled into the Texas
country papers, the loss of the tug-boat “Ajax,” which occurred
before we left New York, being here just given as the loss of the
“splendid steamer Ocax.”
A man who sat near said—
“Reckon you’ve read a good deal, hain’t you?”
“Oh, yes; why?”
“Reckon’d you had.”
“Why?”
“You look as though you liked to read. Well, it’s a good thing. S’pose
you take a pleasure in reading, don’t you?”
“That depends, of course, on what I have to read. I suppose
everybody likes to read when they find anything interesting to them,
don’t they?”
“No; it’s damn tiresome to some folks, I reckon, any how, ’less you’ve
got the habit of it. Well, it’s a good thing; you can pass away your
time so.”

The sort of interest taken in foreign affairs is well enough illustrated

by the views of a gentleman of property in Eastern Texas, who was
sitting with us one night, “spitting in the fire,” and talking about
cotton. Bad luck he had had—only four bales to the hand; couldn’t
account for it—bad luck; and next year he didn’t reckon nothing else
but that there would be a general war in Europe, and then he’d be in
a pretty fix, with cotton down to four cents a pound. Curse those
Turks! If he thought there would be a general war, he would take
every d——d nigger he’d got, right down to New Orleans, and sell
them for what they’d bring. They’d never be so high again as they
were now, and if there should come a general war they wouldn’t be
worth half as much next year. There always were infernal rascals
somewhere in the world trying to prevent an honest man from getting
a living. Oh, if they got to fighting, he hoped they’d eat each other up.
They just ought to be, all of them—Turks, and Russians, and
Prussians, and Dutchmen, and Frenchmen—just be put in a bag
together, and slung into hell. That’s what he’d do with them.

Remarking, one day, at the house of a woman who was brought up

at the North, that there was much more comfort at her house than
any we had previously stopped at, she told us that the only reason
the people didn’t have any comfort here was, that they wouldn’t take
any trouble to get anything. Anything that their negroes could make
they would eat; but they would take no pains to instruct them, or to
get anything that didn’t grow on the plantation. A neighbour of hers
owned fifty cows, she supposed, but very rarely had any milk and
scarcely ever any butter, simply because his people were too lazy to
milk or churn, and he wouldn’t take the trouble to make them.
This woman entirely sustained the assertion that Northern people,
when they come to the South, have less feeling for the negroes than
Southerners themselves usually have. We asked her (she lived in a
village) whether she hired or owned her servants. They owned them
all, she said. When they first came to Texas they hired servants, but
it was very troublesome; they would take no interest in anything; and
she couldn’t get along with them. Then very often their owners, on
some pretext (ill-treatment, perhaps), would take them away. Then
they bought negroes. It was very expensive: a good negro girl cost
seven or eight hundred dollars, and that, we must know, was a great
deal of money to be laid out in a thing that might lie right down the
next day and die. They were not much better either than the hired
servants.
Folks up North talked about how badly the negroes were treated;
she wished they could see how much work her girls did. She had
four of them, and she knew they didn’t do half so much work as one
good Dutch girl such as she used to have at the North. Oh! the
negroes were the laziest things in creation; there was no knowing
how much trouble they gave to look after them. Up to the North, if a
girl went out into the garden for anything, when she came back she
would clean her feet, but these nigger girls will stump right in and
track mud all over the house. What do they care? They’d just as lief
clean the mud after themselves as anything else—their time isn’t any
value to themselves. What do they care for the trouble it gives you?
Not a bit. And you may scold ’em and whip ’em—you never can
break ’em into better habits.
I asked what were servants’ wages when they were hired out to do
housework? They were paid seven or eight dollars a month;
sometimes ten. She didn’t use to pay her girl at the North but four
dollars, and she knew she would do more work than any six of the
niggers, and not give half so much trouble as one. But you couldn’t
get any other help here but niggers. Northern folks talk about
abolishing slavery, but there wouldn’t be any use in that; that would
be ridiculous, unless you could some way get rid of the niggers.
Why, they’d murder us all in our beds—that’s what they’d do. Why,
over to Fannin, there was a negro woman that killed her mistress
with an axe, and her two little ones. The people just flocked together,
and hung her right up on the spot; they ought to have piled some
wood round her, and burned her to death; that would have been a
good lesson to the rest. We afterwards heard her scolding one of her
girls, the girl made some exculpatory reply, and getting the best of
the argument, the mistress angrily told her if she said another word
she would have two hundred lashes given her. She came in and
remarked that if she hadn’t felt so nervous she would have given that
girl a good whipping herself; these niggers are so saucy, it’s very
trying to one who has to take care of them.
Servants are, it is true, “a trial,” in all lands, ages, and nations. But
note the fatal reason this woman frankly gives for the inevitable
delinquencies of slave-servants, “Their time isn’t any value to
themselves!”
The women of Eastern Texas seemed to us, in general, far superior
to their lords. They have, at least, the tender hearts and some of the
gentle delicacy that your “true Texan” lacks, whether mistresses of
slaves, or only of their own frying-pan. They are overworked,
however, as soon as married, and care gives them thin faces, sallow
complexions, and expressions either sad or sour.
Another night we spent at the house of a man who came here, when
a boy, from the North. His father was a mechanic, and had emigrated
to Texas just before the war of Independence. He joined the army,
and his son had been brought up—rather had grown up—Southern
fashion, with no training to regular industry. He had learned no trade.
What need? His father received some thousand acres of land in
payment of his services. The son earned some money by driving a
team; bought some cattle, took a wife, and a house, and now had
been settled six years, with a young family. He had nothing to do but
look after his cattle, go to the nearest town and buy meal and coffee
occasionally, and sell a few oxen when the bill was sent in. His
house was more comfortless than nine-tenths of the stables of the
North. There were several windows, some of which were boarded
over, some had wooden shutters, and some were entirely open.
There was not a pane of glass. The doors were closed with difficulty.
We could see the stars, as we lay in bed, through the openings of
the roof; and on all sides, in the walls of the room, one’s arm might
be thrust out. Notwithstanding, that night the mercury fell below 25°
of our Fahrenheit thermometer. There was the standard food and
beverage, placed before us night and morning. We asked if there
was much game near him? There were a great many deer. He saw
them every day. Did he shoot many? He never shot any; ’twas too
much trouble. When he wanted “fresh,” ’twas easier to go out and
stick a hog (the very words he used). He had just corn enough to
give our horses one feed—there was none left for the morning. His
own horses could get along through the winter on the prairie. He
made pets of his children, but was cross and unjust to his wife, who
might have been pretty, and was affectionate. He was without care—
thoughtless, content, with an unoccupied mind. He took no
newspaper—he read nothing. There was, indeed, a pile of old books
which his father had brought from the North, but they seemed to be
all of the Tract Society sort, and the dust had been undisturbed upon
them, it might have been, for many years.

Manchac Spring.—We found a plantation that would have done no

discredit to Virginia. The house was large and well constructed,
standing in a thick grove, separated from the prairie by a strong
worm-fence. Adjacent, within, was the spring, which deserved its
prominence of mention upon the maps. It had been tastefully
grottoed with heavy limestone rocks, now water-stained and mossy,
and the pure stream came gurgling up, in impetuous gallons, to pour
itself in a bright current out upon the prairie. The fountains of Italy
were what came to mind, and “Fontana de Manciocco” would have
secured a more natural name.
Everything about the house was orderly and neat. The proprietor
came out to receive us, and issued orders about the horses, which
we felt, from their quiet tone, would be obeyed without our
supervision. When we were ushered into a snug supper-room and
found a clean table set with wheat-bread, ham, tea, and preserved
fruits, waited on by tidy and ready girls, we could scarce think we
had not got beyond the bounds of Texas. We were, in fact, quit, for
some time to come, of the lazy poverty of Eastern Texas.

Lower Guadaloupe.—Not finding a suitable camping place, we

stumbled, after dark, into a large plantation upon the river bottom.
The irruption of our train within the plantation fences caused a
furious commotion among the dogs and little negroes, and it was
with no little difficulty we could explain to the planter, who appeared
with a candle, which was instantly blown out upon the porch, our
peaceable intentions. Finally, after a general striking out of Fanny’s
heels and the master’s boots, aided by the throwing of our loose
lariats into the confused crowd, the growling and chattering circle
about us was sufficiently enlarged and subdued for us to obtain a
hearing, and we were hospitably received.
“Ho, Sam! You Tom, here! Call your missus. Suke! if you don’t stop
that infernal noise I’ll have you drowned! Here, Bill! Josh! some of
you! why don’t you help the gentleman? Bring a lantern here!
Packed, are you, sir. Hold on, you there; leave the gun alone. Now,
clear out with you, you little devils, every one of you! Is there no one
in the house? St! after ’em, Tiger! Can’t any of you find a lantern?
Where’s Bill, to take these horses? What are you doing there? I tell
you to be off, now, every one of you! Tom! take a rail and keep ’em
off there!”
In the midst of the noise we go through the familiar motions, and
land our saddles and hampers upon the gallery, then follow what
appears to be the headmost negro to the stable, and give him a hint
to look well out for the horses.
This is our first reintroduction to negro servants after our German
experiences, and the contrast is most striking and disagreeable.
Here were thirty or forty slaves, but not an order could be executed
without more reiteration, and threats, and oaths, and greater trouble
to the master and mistress, than would be needed to get a squadron
under way. We heard the master threaten his negroes with flogging,
at least six times, before we went to bed. In the night a heavy rain
came up, and he rose, on hearing it, to arrange the cistern spout,
cursing again his infernal niggers, who had turned it off for some
convenience of their own. In the morning, we heard the mistress
scolding her girls for having left articles outside which had been
spoiled by the wet, after repeated orders to bring them in. On visiting
the stables we found the door fastened by a board leaned against it.
All the animals were loose, except the mule, which I had fastened
myself. The rope attached to my saddle was stolen, and a shorter
one substituted for it, when I mentioned the fact, by which I was
deceived, until we were too far off to return. The master, seeing the
horses had yet had no fodder, called to a boy to get some for them,
then, countermanding his order, told the boy to call some one else,
and go himself to drive the cows out of the garden. Then, to another
boy, he said, “Go and pull two or three bundles of fodder out of the
stack and give these horses.” The boy soon came with two small
bundles. “You infernal rascal, couldn’t you tote more fodder than
that? Go back and bring four or five bundles, and be quick about it,
or I’ll lick you.” The boy walked slowly back, and returned with four
bundles more.
But on entering at night we were struck with the air of comfort that
met us. We were seated in rocking-chairs in a well-furnished room,
before a blazing fire, offered water to wash, in a little lean-to bed-
room, and, though we had two hours to wait for our supper, it was
most excellent, and we passed an agreeable evening in intelligent
conversation with our host.
After his curiosity about us was satisfied, we learned from him that,
though a young man, he was an old settler, and had made a
comfortable fortune by his plantation. His wife gave us a picturesque
account of their waggon journey here with their people, and
described the hardships, dangers, and privations they had at first to
endure. Now they were far more comfortable than they could have
ever hoped to have been in the State from which they came. They
thought their farm the best cotton land in the world. It extended
across a mile of timbered bottom land from the river, then over a mile
of bottom prairie, and included a large tract of the big prairie “for
range.” Their field would produce, in a favourable season, three
bales to the acre; ordinarily a bale and a half: the “bale” 400 lbs.
They had always far more than their hands could pick. It was much
more free from weeds than the States, so much so, that three hands
would be needed there to cultivate the same area as two here; that
is, with the same hands the crop would be one-third greater.
But so anxious is every one in Texas to give all strangers a
favourable impression, that all statements as to the extreme profit
and healthfulness of lands must be taken with a grain of allowance.
We found it very difficult, without impertinent persistence, to obtain
any unfavourable facts. Persons not interested informed us, that
from one-third to one-half the cotton crop on some of these rich
plantations had been cut off by the worm, on several occasions, and
that negroes suffered much with dysentery and pneumonia.
It cost them very little to haul their cotton to the coast or to get
supplies. They had not been more sickly than they would have been
on the Mississippi. They considered that their steady sea-breeze
was almost a sure preventive of such diseases as they had higher
up the country.
They always employed German mechanics, and spoke well of them.
Mexicans were regarded in a somewhat unchristian tone, not as
heretics or heathen, to be converted with flannel and tracts, but
rather as vermin, to be exterminated. The lady was particularly
strong in her prejudices. White folks and Mexicans were never made
to live together, anyhow, and the Mexicans had no business here.
They were getting so impertinent, and were so well protected by the
laws, that the Americans would just have to get together and drive
them all out of the country.

On the Chockolate.—“Which way did you come?” asked some one

of the old man.
“From ——.”
“See anything of a runaway nigger over there, anywhar?”
“No, sir. What kind of a nigger was it?”
“A small, black, screwed-up-faced nigger.”
“How long has he been out?”
“Nigh two weeks.”
“Whose is he?”
“Judge ——’s, up here. And he cut the judge right bad. Like to have
killed the judge. Cut his young master, too.”
“Reckon, if they caught him, ’twould go rather hard with him.”
“Reckon ’twould. We caught him once, but he got away from us
again. We was just tying his feet together, and he give me a kick in
the face, and broke. I had my six-shooter handy, and I tried to shoot
him, but every barrel missed fire. Been loaded a week. We shot at
him three times with rifles, but he’d got too far off, and we didn’t hit,
but we must have shaved him close. We chased him, and my dog
got close to him once. If he’d grip’d him, we should have got him; but
he had a dog himself, and just as my dog got within about a yard of
him, his dog turned and fit my dog, and he hurt him so bad we
couldn’t get him to run him again. We run him close, though, I tell
you. Run him out of his coat, and his boots, and a pistol he’d got. But
’twas getting towards dark, and he got into them bayous, and kept
swimming from one side to another.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Ten days.”
“If he’s got across the river, he’d get to the Mexicans in two days,
and there he’d be safe. The Mexicans’d take care of him.”
“What made him run?”
“The judge gave him a week at Christmas, and when the week was
up, I s’pose he didn’t want to go to work again. He got unruly, and
they was a goin’ to whip him.”
“Now, how much happier that fellow’d ’a’ been, if he’d just stayed
and done his duty. He might have just worked and done his duty, and
his master’d ’a’ taken care of him, and given him another week when
Christmas come again, and he’d ’a’ had nothing to do but enjoy
himself again. These niggers, none of ’em, knows how much happier
off they are than if they was free. Now, very likely, he’ll starve to
death, or get shot.”
“Oh, the judge treats his niggers too kind. If he was stricter with
them, they’d have more respect for him, and be more contented,
too.”
“Never do to be too slack with niggers.”

We were riding in company, to-day, with a California drover, named

Rankin. He was in search of cattle to drive across the plains. He had
taken a drove before from Illinois, and told us that people in that
State, of equal circumstances, lived ten times better than here, in all
matters of comfort and refinement. He had suffered more in
travelling in Texas, than ever on the plains or the mountains. Not
long before, in driving some mules with his partner, they came to a
house which was the last on the road for fourteen miles. They had
nothing in the world in the house but a few ears of corn, they were
going to grind in their steel mill for their own breakfast, and wouldn’t
sell on any terms. “We hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, but we
actually could get nothing. The only other thing in the cabin, that
could be eaten, was a pile of deer-skins, with the hair on. We had to
stake our mules, and make a fire, and coil around it. About twelve
o’clock there came a norther. We heard it coming, and it made us
howl. We didn’t sleep a wink for cold.”

Houston.—We were sitting on the gallery of the hotel. A tall, jet black
negro came up, leading by a rope a downcast mulatto, whose hands
were lashed by a cord to his waist, and whose face was horribly cut,
and dripping with blood. The wounded man crouched and leaned for
support against one of the columns of the gallery—faint and sick.
“What’s the matter with that boy?” asked a smoking lounger.
“I run a fork into his face,” answered the negro.
“What are his hands tied for?”
“He’s a runaway, sir.”
“Did you catch him?”
“Yes, sir. He was hiding in the hay-loft, and when I went up to throw
some hay to the horses, I pushed the fork down into the mow and it
struck something hard. I didn’t know what it was, and I pushed hard,
and gave it a turn, and then he hollered, and I took it out.”
“What do you bring him here, for?”
“Come for the key of the jail, sir, to lock him up.”
“What!” said another, “one darkey catch another darkey? Don’t
believe that story.”
“Oh yes, mass’r, I tell for true. He was down in our hay-loft, and so
you see when I stab him, I have to catch him.”
“Why, he’s hurt bad, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he says I pushed through the bones.”
“Whose nigger is he?”
“He says he belong to Mass’r Frost, sir, on the Brazos.”
The key was soon brought, and the negro led the mulatto away to
jail. He walked away limping, crouching, and writhing, as if he had
received other injuries than those on his face. The bystanders
remarked that the negro had not probably told the whole story.
We afterwards happened to see a gentleman on horseback, and
smoking, leading by a long rope through the deep mud, out into the
country, the poor mulatto, still limping and crouching, his hands
manacled, and his arms pinioned.
There is a prominent slave-mart in town, which holds a large lot of
likely-looking negroes, waiting purchasers. In the windows of shops,
and on the doors and columns of the hotel, are many written
advertisements, headed “A likely negro girl for sale.” “Two negroes
for sale.” “Twenty negro boys for sale,” etc.

South-eastern Texas.—We were unable to procure at Houston any

definite information with regard to our proposed route. The known
roads thence are those that branch northward and westward from
their levee, and so thoroughly within lines of business does local
knowledge lie, that the eastern shore is completely terra incognita.
The roads east were said to be bad after heavy rains, but the season
had been dry, and we determined to follow the direct and the distinct
road, laid down upon our map.
Now that I am in a position to give preliminary information, however,
there is no reason why the reader should enter this region as
ignorant as we did.
Our route took us by Harrisburg and San Jacinto to Liberty, upon the
Trinity; thence by Beaumont to the Sabine at Turner’s ferry; thence
by the Big Woods and Lake Charles to Opelousas, the old capital of
St. Landry Parish, at the western head of the intricate navigation
from New Orleans.
This large district, extending from the Trinity River to the bayous of
the Mississippi, has, throughout, the same general characteristics,
the principal of which are, lowness, flatness, and wetness. The soil is
variable, but is in greater part a loose, sandy loam, covered with
coarse grasses, forming level prairies, which are everywhere broken
by belts of pine forests, usually bordering creeks and bayous, but
often standing in islands. The surface is but very slightly elevated
above the sea; I suppose, upon an average, less than ten feet. It is,
consequently, imperfectly drained, and in a wet season a large
proportion is literally covered with water, as in crossing it, even in a
dry time, we were obliged to wade through many miles of marshy
pools. The river-bottoms, still lower than the general level, are
subject to constant overflow by tide-water, and what with the fallen
timber, the dense undergrowth, the mire-quags, the abrupt gullies,
the patches of rotten or floating corduroy, and three or four feet of
dirty salt water, the roads through them are not such as one would
choose for a morning ride. The country is sparsely settled, containing
less than one inhabitant to the square mile, one in four being a slave.
The many pools, through which the usual track took us, were
swarming with venemous water-snakes, four or five black moccasins
often lifting at once their devilish heads above the dirty surface, and
wriggling about our horses’ heels. Beyond the Sabine, alligator holes
are an additional excitement, the unsuspicious traveller suddenly
sinking through the treacherous surface, and sometimes falling a
victim, horse and all, to the hideous jaws of the reptile, while
overwhelmed by the engulfing mire in which he lurks.
Upon the whole, this is not the spot in which I should prefer to come
to light, burn, and expire; in fact, if the nether regions, as was
suggested by the dream-gentleman of Nachitoches, be “a boggy
country,” the avernal entrance might, I should think, with good
probabilities, be looked for in this region.
We passed, on both sides the Sabine, many abandoned farms, and
the country is but thinly settled. We found it impossible to obtain any
information about roads, and frequently went astray upon cattle
paths, once losing twenty miles in a day’s journey. The people were
chiefly herdsmen, cultivating a little cotton upon river-banks, but
ordinarily only corn, with a patch of cane to furnish household sugar.
We tried in vain to purchase corn for our horses, and were told that
“folks didn’t make corn enough to bread them, and if anybody had
corn to give his horse, he carried it in his hat and went out behind
somewhere.” The herds were in poor condition, and must in winter
be reduced to the verge of starvation. We saw a few hogs,
converted, by hardship, to figures so unnatural, that we at first took
them for goats. Most of the people we met were old emigrants, from
Southern Louisiana and Mississippi, and more disposed to gaiety
and cheer than the Texan planters. The houses showed a tendency
to Louisiana forms, and the table to a French style of serving the
jerked beef, which is the general dish of the country. The meat is
dried in strips, over smoky fires, and, if untainted and well prepared,
is a tolerably savoury food. I hardly know whether to chronicle it as a
border barbarism, or a Creolism, that we were several times, in this
neighbourhood, shown to a bed standing next to that occupied by
the host and his wife, sometimes with the screen of a shawl,
sometimes without.
We met with one specimen of the Virginia habit of “dipping,” or snuff-
chewing, in the person of a woman who was otherwise neat and
agreeable, and observed that a young lady, well-dressed, and
apparently engaged, while we were present, in reading, went
afterward to light her pipe at the kitchen fire, and had a smoke
behind the house.
The condition of the young men appeared to incline decidedly to
barbarism. We stopped a night at a house in which a drover, bringing
mules from Mexico, was staying; and, with the neighbours who had
come to look at the drove, we were thirteen men at table. When
speaking with us, all were polite and respectful, the women
especially so; but among one another, their coarseness was
incredible. The master of the house, a well-known gentleman of the
county, who had been absent when we arrived, and at supper-time,
came afterwards upon the gallery and commenced cursing furiously,
because some one had taken his pipe. Seeing us, he stopped
abruptly, and after lighting the pipe, said, in a rather peremptory and
formal, but not uncourteous tone: “Where are you from, gentlemen?”
“From Beaumont, sir, last.”
“Been out West?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Travelling?”
“Yes, sir.”
After pausing a moment to make up his mind—
“Where do you live when you are at home, gentlemen, and what’s
your business in this country?”
“We live in New York, and are travelling to see the country.”
“How do you like it?”
“Just here we find it flat and wet.”
“What’s your name?”
“Olmsted.”
“And what’s this gentleman’s name?”
“Olmsted.”
“Is it a Spanish name?”
“No, sir.”
He then abruptly left us, and the young men entertained one another
with stories of fights and horse-trades, and with vulgar obscenities.
Shortly he returned, saying—
“Show you to bed now, gentlemen, if you wish.”
“We are ready, sir, if you will be good enough to get a light.”
“A light?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A light?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get a light?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well” (after a moment’s hesitation), “I’ll get one.”
On reaching the bed-room, which was in a building adjoining, he
stood awaiting our pleasure. Thanking him, I turned to take the light,
but his fingers were the candlestick. He continued to hold it, and six
young men, who had followed us, stood grouped around while we
undressed, placing our clothes upon the floor. Judy advanced to lie
down by them. One of the young men started forward, and said—
“I’ve got a right good knife.”
“What?”
“I’ve got a right good knife, if you want it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, only I’ve got a right good knife, and if you’d like to kill that
dog, I’ll lend it to you.”
“Please to tell me what you mean?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Keep your dog quiet, or I’ll kill her,” I suppose was the interpretation.
When we had covered ourselves in bed, the host said—
“I suppose you don’t want the light no more?”
“No, sir;” and all bade us good night; but leaving the door open,
commenced feats of prolonged dancing, or stamping upon the
gallery, which were uproariously applauded. Then came more
obscenities and profanities, apropos to fandango frolics described by
the drovers. As we had barely got to sleep, several came to occupy
other beds in our room. They had been drinking freely, and
continued smoking in bed.
Upon the floor lay two boys of fourteen, who continued shouting and
laughing after the others had at length become quiet. Some one
soon said to one of them—
“You had better stop your noise; Frank says he’ll be damn’d if he
don’t come in and give you a hiding.”
Frank was trying to sleep upon the gallery.
“By ——,” the boy cried, raising himself, and drawing a coat from
under the pillow, “if he comes in here, I’ll be damn’d if I don’t kill him.
He dare not come in here. I would like to see him come in here,”
drawing from his coat pocket a revolver, and cocking it. “By ——, you
may come in here now. Come in here, come in here! Do you here
that?” (revolving the pistol rapidly). “—— damn me, if I don’t kill you,
if you come near the door.”
This continued without remonstrance for some time, when he lay
down, asking his companion for a light for his pipe, and continuing
the noisy conversation until we fell asleep. The previous talk had
been much of knife and pistol fights which had taken place in the
county. The same boy was obliging and amiable the next morning,
assisting us to bring in and saddle the horses at our departure.
One of the men here was a Yankee, who had lived so long in the
Slave States that he had added to his original ruralisms a very
complete collection of Southernisms, some of which were of the
richest we met with. He had been in the Texas Rangers, and,
speaking of the West, said he had been up round the head of the
Guadaloupe “heaps and cords of times,” at the same time giving us
a very picturesque account of the county. Speaking of wolves, he
informed us that on the San Jacinto there were “any dimensions of
them.” Obstinacy, in his vocabulary, was represented by “damnation
cussedness.” He was unable to conceive of us in any other light than
as two peddlers who had mistaken their ground in coming here.
At another house where we stopped (in which, by the way, we ate
our supper by the light of pine knots blazing in the chimney, with an
apology for the absence of candles), we heard some conversation
upon a negro of the neighbourhood, who had been sold to a free
negro, and who refused to live with him, saying he wouldn’t be a
servant to a nigger. All agreed that he was right, although the man
was well known to be kind to his negroes, and would always sell any
of them who wished it. The slave had been sold because he wouldn’t
mind. “If I had a negro that wouldn’t mind,” said the woman of the
house, “I’d break his head, or I’d sell him; I wouldn’t have one about
me.” Her own servant was standing behind her. “I do think it would
be better if there wasn’t any niggers in the world, they do behave so
bad, some of ’em. They steal just like hogs.”

South-western Louisiana.—Soon after crossing the Sabine, we

entered a “hummock,” or tract of more fertile, oak-bearing land,
known as the Big Woods. The soil is not rich, but produces cotton, in
good seasons nearly a bale to the acre, and the limited area is fully
occupied. Upon one plantation we found an intelligent emigrant from
Mississippi, who had just bought the place, having stopped on his
way into Texas, because the time drew near for the confinement of
his wife. Many farms are bought by emigrants, he said, from such
temporary considerations: a child is sick, or a horse exhausted; they
stop for a few weeks; but summer comes, and they conclude to put
in a crop, and often never move again.
It was before reaching the Big Woods, that alligator-holes were first
pointed out to us, with a caution to avoid them. They extend from an
aperture, obliquely, under ground, to a large cavern, the walls of
which are puddled by the motions of the animal; and, being partly
filled with water, form a comfortable amphibious residence. A
horseman is liable, not only to breaking through near the orifice, but
to being precipitated into the den itself, where he will find awaiting
him, a disagreeable mixture of mire and angry jaws. In the deep
water of the bottoms, we met with no snakes; but the pools were
everywhere alive with them. We saw a great variety of long-legged
birds, apparently on friendly terms with all the reptiles.
A day’s journey took us through the Big Woods, and across
Calcasieu to Lake Charles. We were not prepared to find the
Calcasieu a superb and solemn river, two hundred and thirty yards
across and forty-five feet deep. It is navigable for forty miles, but at
its mouth has a bar, on which is sometimes only eighteen inches of
water, ordinarily thirty inches. Schooners of light draft ascend it,
bringing supplies, and taking out the cotton raised within its reach.
Lake Charles is an insignificant village, upon the bank of a pleasant,
clear lakelet, several miles in extent.
From the Big Woods to Opelousas, there was no change in the
monotonous scenery. Everywhere extended the immense moist
plain, being alternate tracts of grass and pine. Nearer Opelousas,
oak appears in groups with the pine, and the soil is darker and more
fertile. Here the land was mostly taken up, partly by speculators, in
view of the Opelousas Railway, then commenced. But, in all the
western portion of the district, the land is still government property,
and many of the people squatters. Sales are seldom made, but the
estimated price of the land is fifty cents an acre.
Some of the timbered land, for a few years after clearing, yields good
crops of corn and sweet potatoes. Cotton is seldom attempted, and
sugar only for family use. Oats are sometimes grown, but the yield is
small, and seldom thrashed from the straw. We noted one field of
poor rye. So wet a region and so warm a climate suggested rice,
and, were the land sufficiently fertile, it would, doubtless, become a
staple production. It is now only cultivated for home use, the bayou
bottoms being rudely arranged for flowing the crop. But without
manure no profitable return can be obtained from breaking the
prairie, and the only system of manuring in use is that of ploughing
up occasionally the cow-pens of the herdsmen.
The road was now distinctly marked enough, but had frequent and
embarrassing forks, which occasioned us almost as much
annoyance as the clouds of musquitoes which, east of the Sabine,
hovered continually about our horses and our heads. Notions of
distance we found incredibly vague. At Lake Charles we were
informed that the exact distance to Opelousas was ninety-six miles.
After riding eight hours, we were told by a respectable gentleman
that the distance from his house was one hundred and twenty miles.
The next evening the distance was forty miles; and the following
evening a gentleman who met us stated first that it was “a good long
way;” next, that it was “thirty or forty miles, and damn’d long ones,
too.” About four miles beyond him, we reached the twentieth mile-
post.
Across the bayous of any size, bridges had been constructed, but so
rudely built of logs that the traveller, where possible, left them for a
ford.
The people, after passing the frontier, changed in every prominent
characteristic. French became the prevailing language, and French
the prevailing manners. The gruff Texan bidding, “Sit up, stranger;
take some fry!” became a matter of recollection, of which “Monsieur,
la soupe est servie,” was the smooth substitute. The good-nature of
the people was an incessant astonishment. If we inquired the way, a