Liberalism and the Art of Separation Author(s): Michael Walzer Reviewed work(s): Source: Political Theory, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Aug., 1984), pp. 315-330 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191512 . Accessed: 24/08/2012 12:12 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Political Theory. http://www.jstor.org THE RESOURCES OF AMERICAN LIBERALISM I. LIBERALISM AND THE ART OF SEPARATION MICHAEL WALZER The Institutefor AdvancedStudy I suggestthat we thinkof liberalismas a certainway ofdrawing the map ofthe social and politicalworld. The old, preliberalmap showeda largelyundifferentiated land mass,with rivers and mountains,cities and towns,but no borders."Every man is a piece ofthe continent," as John Donne wrote-and the continentwas all of a piece. Society was conceivedas an organicand integratedwhole. It mightbe viewedunder the aspect of religion,or politics,or economy,or family,but all these interpenetratedone anotherand constituteda singlereality. Church and state,church-state and university,civil society and politicalcommunity, dynastyand government,office and property,public lifeand private life,home and shop: each pair was, mysteriouslyor unmysteriously, two-in-one,inseparable. Confrontingthis world, liberal theorists preachedand practicedan art of separation.They drew lines, marked offdifferent realms, and createdthe sociopolitical map withwhich we are stillfamiliar. The mostfamous line is the"wall" betweenchurch and state,but there are manyothers. Liberalism is a worldof walls, and each one createsa newliberty. This is theway the art of separation works. The wall betweenchurch and state createsa sphereof religiousactivity, of public and private worship,congregations and consciences,into which politiciansand bureaucratsmay not intrude.Queen Elizabeth was speakinglike a liberal,though a minimalistone, when she said that she would not "make a windowinto men's souls, to pinchthem there."' Believers are setfree from every sort of officialor legal coercion.They can findtheir own way to salvation,privately or collectively;or theycan failto find theirway; or theycan refuseto look fora way.The decisionis entirely theirown; this is whatwe call freedomof conscience or religiousliberty. Similarly,the line thatliberals drew between the old church-state(or state-church)and the universitiescreates academic freedom,leaving POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 12 No. 3, August1984 315-330 ? 1984 Sage Publications,Inc. 315 316 POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1984 professorsas freeto professas believersare to believe.The university takes shape as a kind of walled city.In the hierarchicalworld of the middle ages, universitieswere legally walled, that is, studentsand professorswere a privilegedgroup, protectedfrom penalties and punishmentsmeted out to ordinarymen. But thiswas a functionof the integrationof theuniversities and thechurch (students and professors had clerical status) and then of the churchand the state. Precisely because of this integration,scholars did not enjoy the privilegeof hereticalthought. Today the universitiesare intellectuallythough not legallywalled; students and professorshave no legalprivileges, but they are, in principleat least, absolutelyfree in the sphereof knowledge.2 Privatelyor collectively,they can criticize,question, doubt, or rejectthe establishedcreeds of theirsociety. Or, what is more likelyin any relativelystable society, they can elaboratethe established creeds, most oftenin conventional,but sometimesin novel and experimentalways. Similarly,again, the separationof civil societyand politicalcom- munitycreates the sphere of economic competition and freeenterprise, the marketin commodities,labor, and capital. I willfocus for now on thefirst of these three and adoptthe largest view of market freedom. On thisview, the buyers and sellersof commodities are entirelyat libertyto strikeany bargainthey wish, buying anything, selling anything, at any price theycan agree upon, withoutthe interferenceof state officials. Thereis no suchthing as a just price,or at leastthere is no enforcement of a just price; and, similarly,there are not sumptuarylaws, no restrictionson usury,no qualityor safetystandards, no minimumwage, and so on. The maximcaveat emptor, let the buyer beware, suggests that market freedomentails certain risks for consumers. But so does religiousfreedom. Some people buy unsafeproducts and some people are convertedto falsedoctrines. Free men and womenmust bear such risks.I have mydoubts about the analogy,since unsafe products pose actual,and falsedoctrines only speculative, risks, but I won'tpursue this argumenthere. My immediatepurpose is not to criticizebut onlyto describethe map theliberals drew, and on thatmap thecommodity was givenat least as muchroom as thecreed. Anotherexample: the abolition of dynasticgovernment separates familyand stateand makespossible the political version of the "career open to talents,"the highestform, we mightsay, of the labor market. Onlythe eldest male in a certainline can be a king,but anyonecan be a presidentor primeminister. More generally,the line that marksoff politicaland social positionfrom familial property creates the sphere of Walzer / LIBERALISM AND SEPARATION 317 officeand thenthe freedomto competefor bureaucratic and profes- sional place, to lay claim to a vocation, apply for an appointment, develop a specialty,and so on. The notionof one's lifeas one's project probablyhas its originhere. It is to be contrastedwith the notionof one'slife as one'sinheritance-on the one hand,the predetermination of birthand blood; on the other,the self-determinationof struggleand achievement. Finally,the separation of public and privatelife creates the sphere of individualand familialfreedom, privacy and domesticity.Most recently, thishas beendescribed as a sphereof sexual freedom;so itis, but it isn't originallyor primarilythat; it is designedto encompassa verywide rangeof interestsand activities-whateverwe choose to do, shortof incest,rape, and murder,in our own homesor amongour friendsand relatives:reading books, talkingpolitics, keeping a journal, teaching what we know to our children,cultivating (or, for that matter, neglecting)our gardens. Our homesare ourcastles, and therewe arefree fromofficial surveillance. This is, perhaps,the freedomthat we most take forgranted-the two-way television screens of Orwell's1984 are a particularlyfrightening piece of sciencefiction-so it is worthstressing how rarea freedomit is in humanhistory. "Our homesare our castles" was firstof all theclaim of people whose castles were their homes, and it was fora verylong time an effectiveclaim only for them. Now itsdenial is an occasion for indignationand outrage even among ordinary citizens.We greatlyvalue our privacy,whether or not we do odd and excitingthings in private.3 IH The art of separationhas neverbeen highlyregarded on the left, especiallythe Marxist left, where it is commonlyseen as an ideological ratherthan a practicalenterprise. Leftists have generallystressed both theradical interdependence of the different social spheresand thedirect and indirectcausal linksthat radiate outwards from the economy. The liberalmap is a pretense,on the Marxistview, an elaborateexercise in hypocrisy,for in factthe prevailingreligious creeds are adaptedto the ideologicalrequirements of a capitalistsociety; and theuniversities are organizedto reproducethe higher echelons of the capitalist work force; and the marketposition of the largestcompanies and corporationsis subsidizedand guaranteedby the capitaliststate; and offices,though 318 POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1984 notlegally inheritable, are neverthelesspassed on and exchangedwithin a capitalistpower elite; and we arefree in ourhomes only so longas what we do thereis harmlessand withoutprejudice to the capitalistorder. Liberalsdraw lines and call themwalls, as ifthey had thematerial force of brickor stone,but theyare onlylines, one-dimensional, doctrinal, insubstantial.The contemporarysocial worldis stillan organicwhole, less differentfrom feudalism than we mightthink. Land has been replaced by moveable wealth as the dominantgood, and while that replacementreverberates through all thespheres of social life,it doesn't altertheir deep connectedness. And yetMarx also believedthat the liberal art of separation had been all too successful,creating, as he wrote in his essay on the Jewish question,"an individualseparated from the community, withdrawn into himself,wholly pre-occupied with his privateinterest and actingin accordancewith his privatecaprice.'" I shallwant to come back to this argumentlater on forit makes an importantpoint about thetheoretical foundationsof the liberal enterprise. For now,however, it is enoughto saythat in Marx'seyes even the egotism of the separated individual was a social product-required,indeed, by the relations of production and thenreproduced in all thespheres of social activity.Society remained an organizedwhole even if its members had losttheir sense of connection.