What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel
Michael Sandel’s critiques of our actions are under scrutiny by Philip Badger.
That What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets is a
subtle and sophisticated analysis of the impact of the free market on
our lives will come as no surprise to readers familiar with the recent
work of Professor Michael Sandel of Harvard University. His argument,
which is difficult to resist in several respects, comes down to the
point that the increasing commodification of our existence is a form of
corruption which undermines both our relationships with each other and
the relationship of the individual with society. The book is light on
names, and even Aristotle only gets two mentions – oddly, considering he
is Sandel’s obvious touchstone throughout. But the doyen of progressive
liberalism, John Rawls, is clearly lurking in the shadows here,
unacknowledged.
Sandel opens with a list of the things which, in America at least, it
is possible to buy – ranging from the predictable (privileged access to
medical care), to the bizarre (an upgrade on your prison cell), to the
simply obscene (the right to kill an endangered animal). His point is
that in a world where everything can be bought and sold, we lose track
of why some things shouldn’t be. In the end, what he is against is a
form of corruption in which everything, including sex and even
friendship and love, is debased (although even the most zealot of
neo-liberals must accept the wisdom of the old Beatles’ song – money
really ‘can’t buy me love’; and to think otherwise is not so much to
corrupt love, as Sandel
suggests, but to misunderstand its nature).
In some very clever ways, this is a conservative book, and it will
appeal to those on both sides of the Atlantic who bemoan globalisation
and its corrosive impact on traditional communities and relationships.
There is little faith in the benevolence of Adam Smith’s ‘unseen hand’
to be found in these pages, and there are also moments when Sandel’s
egalitarian instincts are very much in evidence. Indeed, he reveals
himself to be much more than a knee-jerk reactionary who prioritises the
communal over the individual, and he paints liberalism as a more varied
political and moral philosophy than some of its critics might allow
for. Liberalism, for Sandel, is capable of a self-critique which can
distance itself from the market mania of a Hayek or an Ayn Rand and come
to an understanding of why justice dictates that there are some goods
that must be beyond the reach of anyone’s cheque book. Put simply, the
market can disempower as well as liberate, and it is its capacity for
merciless economic marginalisation that inspires liberalism’s
self-critique.
So for Sandel, liberalism is no pantomime villain, and some of its
supporters are acknowledged as recognising the downsides of the
unfettered market and as wanting to knock the edges off its power.
However – to use an unfortunately financial turn of phrase – the credit
given to their understanding is limited. Even those who object to the
rich being able to (literally) buy their way to the front of the queue
have failed, argues Sandel, to appreciate the true danger that such
behaviour betokens. In the end, it is the market’s neutrality about the
value of our preferences – a neutrality shared by all varieties of
liberalism – that is for him the undoing of our culture. Some might wish
for a less hackneyed example than the one that Sandel uses to explain
his point – prostitution – but it is well-chosen for his purposes. For
progressive liberals like myself, the issue with prostitution is one of
whether a woman’s involvement in the ‘oldest profession’ is truly
voluntary. We worry that economic circumstance might drive women (and
sometimes men) to actions they would otherwise feel repulsed by.
However, this marks the limit of the liberal desire to have the law
regulate such activity. If we can be truly convinced that free choice is
genuinely being exercised here, liberals of all kinds are wont to back
off and leave people to it. This, according to Sandel, is a big mistake,
and leaves us in a moral vacuum in which we lack the resources to
defend what is valuable about human life and our relationships.
It is here that progressive liberals will baulk at Sandel’s critique.
Firstly – acknowledging the debt that Rawls owes to Kant in terms of
arguing for the intrinsic value of individuals – we ought not to be shy
in claiming that some things we don’t want to legislate against are,
nonetheless, wrong. Treating you with due respect as a person implies,
for both Kant and for Rawls, that I can never treat you as simply a
‘thing’ for my own gratification: if acting morally, I cannot simply
treat you, in Kant’s phrase, as a ‘means to an end’. Prostitution is the
outstanding example of one person failing to treat another with the
kind of respect that this ‘categorical imperative’ of Kant’s demands;
and yet, while this might be the foundation of liberal morality, it is
less clear that it should play that role in our conception of justice.
There is nothing in the liberal notion of legal and political
neutrality to stop me imploring, pleading and wishing for my daughter
not to choose to become a prostitute; but this is not the same as
thinking that I ought to be able to invoke the power of the law to
prohibit her from doing so. My values – what we might call my ‘concept
of the good’ – are at odds with prostitution, but as a liberal, this
only implies my right to exhort rather than dictate to my daughter in
her career choice. Only when I see her coerced or her autonomy otherwise
curtailed by circumstance should I expect the state to jump in on my
side. As another liberal, J.S. Mill, proceeding from a very different
tradition, put it in his great essay On Liberty, I should be
able to argue, persuade and remonstrate with those whose conception of a
meaningful life differs from my own, but not compel them or visit any
evil upon them to force them to change. Mill did not doubt that some
ways of life are more worthwhile than others – he famously wrote of the
higher pleasures of a Socrates compared to the lower pleasures of a pig –
but he also argued that what contributes to the development of one
person’s ‘higher nature’ might be very different from what contributes
to another’s.
Sandel’s view is that liberals think we should ‘leave our principles
at the door’ in public debate, but this directive turns out not to
stick. On the contrary, there is nothing to stop us from opining about
the seedy nature of the international organ market, or the dubious moral
status of renting out a womb for profit (to use a couple of other
examples he uses to reveal the corrupting power of markets); but there
is very little that would allow us to outright ban such practices. Let
me be clear here: the moment there is a suspicion that poverty is
rendering the ‘choice’ of an organ donor or a surrogate mother anything
other than a truly free one, the progressive liberals will want the law
to step in. It is in the absence of such a suspicion that we demand the
law be silent (but not necessarily ourselves).
The big issue with Professor Sandel’s case against unlimited markets
comes down to the questions of what values are to be considered ‘good’
or non-corrupt, and what kinds of backing he thinks the law should give
to particular sets of values. If he is prepared to retreat simply to the
position that we should not be reticent in expressing our dismay at
certain activities, then it’s not at all clear that he holds a view
truly distinct from that of many liberals. If, by contrast, he thinks
that the law ought to weigh in on the side of one particular concept of
the good – a particular set of values about what constitutes a moral and
worthwhile existence – he ought, perhaps, be a little more explicit
about what such values might be, and why. Instead, what we get here is a
kind of implicit gesture towards sets of values common to the cultural
and religious traditions of many of the communities that exist within
his country [America]. The obvious danger here is that whatever list of
values is settled on, it will not encompass or even attempt to encompass
the values of all traditions and communities. So what is at issue here
is the validity of a kind of legally-backed cultural conservatism, in
which the majority, or those who can portray themselves as a majority,
get to dictate what is appropriate to the rest of us.
Actually, none of this falls anywhere close to Professor Sandel’s
actual intentions. Indeed he is a man who clearly embodies the traits of
tolerance and even ‘neutrality’ the lack of which causes him so much
concern in others. To this extent, we should value him even as we
question the merits of his arguments, and embrace once more Rawls’
dictum that the ‘right’ – meaning the just and unbiased treatment of all
– should, in a liberal democracy, take precedence over any particular
conception of the ‘good’.
© Philip Badger 2013
Phil Badger teaches philosophy and psychology in Sheffield.
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