A favourite socialist

As I observed two days ago, there are a few thinkers who describe themselves as, say, conservative, liberal or socialist, but whose understanding of politics and its place in a complex world is less prey to the reductionisms usually associated with the ideologies. One of these is the British political scientist Bernard Crick, whose most famous book, In Defence of Politics, has become something of a classic in the four decades since it appeared.

Remarkably Crick calls himself a socialist, but, unlike many socialists, he is at pains to emphasize the distinctiveness of the political enterprise, which cannot simply be reduced to economics or an economically-based class struggle.

Politics is too often regarded as a poor relation, inherently dependent and subsidiary; it is rarely praised as something with a life and character of its own. Politics is not religion, ethics, law, science, history, or economics; it neither solves everything, nor is it present everywhere; and it is not any one political doctrine, such as conservatism, liberalism, socialism, communism, or nationalism, though it can contain elements of most of these things. Politics is politics, to be valued in itself, not because it is 'like' or 'really is' something else more respectable or peculiar. Politics is politics. The person who wishes not to be troubled by politics and to be left alone finds himself the unwitting ally of those to whom politics is a troublesome obstacle to their well-meant intentions to leave nothing alone (pp. 15-16).

One might, of course, quibble with his assumed definitions of religion and ethics, but this is otherwise a pretty good statement.

Among the antipolitical trends from which Crick defends politics are ideology, democracy and nationalism. (His critique of democracy is largely responsible for my including a chapter in my own book on democracy as ideology, a chapter that might initially puzzle otherwise sympathetic readers.)

Obviously influenced by Aristotle and Hannah Arendt, Crick views politics as an irreplaceable and irreducible activity that conciliates the diverse interests in society in peaceful fashion. Politics in this sense is untidy and rarely conforms to every aspiration people would impose on it. It is necessarily limited and cannot solve every problem. Yet we cannot do without it.

One can hardly envision a starker contrast to those socialists who either place too much hope in state action or despise the state as a mere instrument of oppression. If we have to be ruled by socialists -- as we were in Ontario from 1990 to 1995 -- then I would prefer to see the likes of Crick in public office.