Giorgia Meloni’s coalition won the recent parliamentary elections in Italy. Some think she is an “illiberal democrat” of the right like Victor Orbán and other current strongmen. Professor Alberto Mingardi, director general of the Bruno Leoni Institute, challenges this idea. In my opinion, the quote that John O. McGinnis provides from a Meloni speech is strongly suggestive of illiberal democracy (see “New Avatars for the Right,” October 13, 2022):
Why is the family an enemy? Why is the family so frightening? There is a single answer to all these questions. Because it defines us. Because it is our identity. Because everything that defines us is now an enemy for those who would like us to no longer have an identity and to simply be perfect consumer slaves. And so they attack national identity, they attack religious identity, they attack gender identity, attack family identity. … Because … when I no longer have an identity or roots, then I will be the perfect slave at the mercy of financial speculators. The perfect consumer … We will defend the value of the human being. … We will defend God, country and family.
Assuming that the translation is faithful, Meloni does look like a populist of the right and a would-be strongman. (See my review of Gideon Rachman’s The Age of the Strongman in the current issue of Regulation.)
It is not difficult to see that the identity she is glorifying is a unicorn. If the family defines us, “is our identity” as she says, it cannot be our nation or our religion or our “gender” that really defines us. Ms. Meloni would probably answer that an Italian is defined by all of these (“God, country and family”) in a sort of composite identity. But this does not work. Fragmented identities don’t make an identity. Not only are there Italians of different genders (or sex), but also some who are atheists or otherwise non-Catholics. Only with two characteristics, Catholic or not, male or female, we already have four sorts of Italians. Add nationalist vs. non-nationalist and we have eight sorts. These identities can easily become conflictual. What if “country” —“the fatherland” as the Financial Times renders the country part of Meloni’s triadic slogan—requires somebody to sacrifice his family to conscription at the service of the Italian state, embodiment of the fatherland?
This reminds me of what Rose Wilder Lane wrote after her travels in Italy (and other countries including Russia) in the 1920s (“Give Me Liberty,” Saturday Evening Post, March 7, 1936):
I was finally compelled to admit to my Italian friends that I had seen the spirit of Italy revive under Mussolini. And it seemed to me that this revival was based on a separation of individual liberty from the industrial revolution whose cause and source is individual liberty. I said that in Italy, as in Russia, an essentially medieval, planned and controlled economic order was taking over the fruits of the industrial revolution while destroying its root, the freedom of the individual.
“Why will you talk about the rights of individuals!” Italians exclaimed, at last impatient. “An individual is nothing. As individuals we have no importance whatever. I will die, you will die, millions will live and die, but Italy does not die. Italy is important. Nothing matters but Italy.”
The quote above from Meloni deserves to be repeated urbi et orbi, because it shows how the right’s identity politics is similar to the left’s identity politics, at least on the more extreme parts of the standard political spectrum. Only the identity characteristics and the favored groups are different. In both cases, state authoritarianism is required to try to impose the correct identity on everyone. It is not surprising, then, that both the right and the left are opposed to free markets, which allow each individual to make his own choices and define his own identity, even (in most cases) if the majority or “the people” does not agree.
Except in a small primitive tribe, an individual has several “identities” along many dimensions and one could not easily find two individuals with the same composite identity. Finding a common denominator—a common value or common preference—among Italians or in any large group of modern individuals would only point to a common interest in the existence of an abstract social order that allows each individual to be himself, that is, to be different. A common interest could in no way justify imposing on all the same identity. It is the essence of classical liberalism and libertarianism that each individual should be free to choose his own identity—without, of course, forcing other people to embrace it.
Reading Friedrich Hayek or James Buchanan (or Buchanan with Gordon Tullock) would help Ms. Meloni, like most of our rulers, realize that collective identity is a dangerous mirage. Reading Anthony de Jasay would be a therapeutic shock of another magnitude. But the reader of these authors must be lucky enough to have learned the prerequisites necessary to understand, or must be able to learn something radically new.
READER COMMENTS
Thomas Strenge
Oct 17 2022 at 5:19pm
I feel that you are splitting hairs. The fundamental truth is that what is happening here is what is happening in Europe. It is the aggressive degradation of established cultural norms by cultural Marxists that divides the world into oppressors and oppressed, and seeks to upend all of civilization. Into what, we know not, but we can guess.
Mactoul
Oct 18 2022 at 2:28am
Not only cultural Marxists-there are no one more enthusiastic in running down all which holds a society together than a dogmatic libertarian. For von Mises, even a voluntarily accepted religion was a coercion against individual self-definition.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 27 2022 at 10:50am
Mactoul: Quote and citation, please.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 18 2022 at 11:27am
Thomas: I would suggest that the hair splitter is the one who splits collectivism (the preference for collective choices) into two completely unrelated half-hair: Marxist and rightist. In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek reminded us how fascists (including Mussolini) were often former Marxists or socialists.
Emelia
Oct 24 2022 at 3:28pm
I would argue that those cultural norms come from a flawed society though. Should social norms not be changed with our society? Putting America under the microscope, the founding fathers couldn’t make cyber security laws, so they had to do it once technology was invented to ensure safety. So, considering that, cultural norms must change with the times.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 25 2022 at 11:58am
Emilia: This is an interesting issue. Why should “cultural norms” change with the times? It must depend on the nature of these rules (a more useful term than “cultural norms,” I would think) and the characteristics of the times. If you are not familiar with the theory of Friedrich Hayek, let me just recommend three short reviews of mine that may give you a different perspective: (1) my review of his The Fatal Conceit; (2) my review of his Rules and Order; (3) my review of his The Mirage of Social Justice.
Mactoul
Oct 18 2022 at 2:25am
Since libertarians only recognize individuals and the family and national levels of organization of mankind are invisible to them, the above sentiments are not surprising.
Multiple levels of identity that so puzzle Lemieux are easily accounted for in non-libertarian models. I find nothing mystifying in sentiments expressed by the Italian prime minister. However, the libertarian can’t even say what Italy is or what an Italian is–these terms are a matter of administrative (in)convenience merely.
Jon Murphy
Oct 18 2022 at 8:00am
Good stuff, Pierre. Identity politics appears to me a specific instance of a general phenomenon: confusing emergent orders with planned orders. In my mind, talking of “defending the family” through legislation makes about as much sense as “defending the equilibrium” or “defending the firm” in economics.
The family is an emergent order. It’s precise characteristics will vary depending on the members, and indeed even how we define “family.” I mean, there is my immediate family (myself, my parents, my brothers), my Dad’s side, my Mom’s side, the extended family (Mom + Dad), the non-blood family members, etc., all of which are unique and represent different identities. All of these emerge; they do not exist outside of, or independent of, the individuals.
This line reminds me of a quote from Shakespere:
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.”
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 18 2022 at 11:39am
Jon: Interesting point about the relation between identity engineering (on the right and left) and the impossibility of conceiving spontaneous orders. The question raised by Buchanan remains: what’s our evaluation criterion for a spontaneous order. (I mention this problem in both my Regulation review of Buchanan’s Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative and my recent Econlib review of Hayek’s The Mirage of Social Justice.) And exquisite quote from Shakespeare!
Mactoul
Oct 19 2022 at 12:49am
By the same reckoning you should have no qualms about collectivist assault on market freedom. It is an emergent order and thus requires no defense.
Jon Murphy
Oct 19 2022 at 7:24am
Your response is a perfect example of my point: it’s confusing top-down and bottom-up. Whereas much identity politics confuse the result of an emergent order with something to be imposed and codified, you’re making the opposite confusion: something that is imposed for something that is emergent.
The family is an emergent order. It evolved in such a way to adjust for various problems (“costs”) in the same way firms develop to reduce transaction costs. As costs change, so will family structures. And they will take on many, many forms. It doesn’t make sense to “defend” the family in any more than it makes sense to “defend” the price of apples at $1.
A Soviet-style weakening and a right-wing “defending” are two forms of the same sin. Both undermine the advantages of the institution known as “family” in order to serve some government goal.
The entire liberal system of individual liberty, choice, and “having a go,” is what needs to be defended.
Knut P. Heen
Oct 19 2022 at 11:48am
She may mean defending the family as a decision-making unit (or an economic unit) against the interference from politicians and bureaucrats. That is usually what you hear from European conservatives. It is usually about how to care for the young and the old. Traditionally, women were working at home providing care for family members (both young and old). Now, women still tend to choose care occupations, but go to a kindergarten or a nursing home and care for somebody else’s children and parents. Conservatives don’t like the system. Yet, they are forced into it due to the tax/subsidy system. The family income tax is higher if the man earns $100k and the woman $0, than if both earn $50k while all types of care are heavily subsidized. The traditional family has been crushed by economic incentives created by politicians on the left. It makes sense for conservatives to defend the family against those attacks.
On the other side, she probably also want to get rid of same sex marriages and all other sorts of family arrangements she does not approve of. She probably does not define those as families, hence she does not see an attack on alternative family arrangements as a contradiction to “defending the family”.
Jon Murphy
Oct 19 2022 at 12:47pm
Hm. Your explanation doesn’t make sense. Opposing various incentives does not constitute “defending the family as a decision-making unit.” As you point out, the family is still making decisions. Contra your point, they are not “forced into it.”
Further, the point about a “traditional family has been crushed by economic incentives created by politicians on the left,” is problematic for the reasons I list above. What is a “traditional family”? How do women entering the workforce constitute an attack on that?
Mactoul
Oct 19 2022 at 9:15pm
Is there any evidence for the contention that family “evolved to adjust for various problems”?
Or it is just a Marxist/libertarian dogma. From a perspective, there is much more common between the Left (socialist, communist, progressive) and the libertarianism than between the Left and the so-called right wing authoritarianism.
Both deny any mediating structure between the State and naked individuals. Thus, both have tendency toward social dissolution and towards tyranny ultimately.
Jon Murphy
Oct 19 2022 at 10:40pm
Oh yeah. Loads. The fact that the family is one of (if not the most) enduring institution in human history is pretty strong evidence, prima facie.
Families are vital for solving numerous problems: raising generations, transmitting morals and mores, social and moral support, etc.
Societies that have tried to replicate/replace the family have ended in failure (see, for example, the authoritarian societies of Nazi Germany or the USSR). They are gone. The family endures.
The importance of the family seems, to my eyes, to be one of the key conservative claims on why defending the family is so important. Odd to see you question it now.
The institution of family is vital. But its precise structure will take on many forms based on numerous factors. Just like firms are vital, but their precise structure will take on many forms based on numerous factors. Or market prices are vital, but what they are can be any infinite number of things based on various factors.
Jon Murphy
Oct 20 2022 at 12:01am
As Pierre points out below, given that liberalism does not deny, but rather emphasizes the importance of, many institutions that are nether purely individual or purely the state, it’s hard to know what you mean with this sentence.
If I had to guess, I think you’re confusing methodological individualism, which is a method of analysis, with a normative statement. To claim, as we liberals do, that subjective individual motivations explain social phenomena (a positive claim) is not the same as saying collectives do not or should not exist (a normative claim).
Indeed, given the amount of time we spend studying collectives, the myrid of forms they can take, and how individuals act within them (eg Adam Smith, James M Buchanan, Mancur Olson, Elinor Ostrom, Ronald Coase, just to name a few), your statement that we “deny mediating structure” is quite confusing.
Jose Pablo
Oct 20 2022 at 7:50am
I guess Mactoul means a “mandatory mediating structure designed by a central planner specifically to increase the well-being of the (helpless) naked individual”
This “mandatory mediating structures” have to be shaped (if not fully designed) by the Leviathan and protected from “dissident” individuals that commit the heresy of thinking they know better how to pursue their own happiness.
I do expect classical liberals oposing these “mandatory structures” in any of its multiple forms: from the “cage of norms” to the tax code.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 19 2022 at 10:54pm
Mactoul: You claim that libertarians “deny any mediating structure between the State and naked individuals.” I am curious to know. Perhaps you can find a few contemporary eccentric libertarians would would think so, but I am not sure; I can’t think of anyone. Can you find for us just one well-known contemporary libertarian who takes that stance? More unambiguously, can you find just one well-recognized classical liberal in the Anglo-Saxon tradition during the past three centuries who took that stance? Even in the French or continental tradition, it is not sure that you could find one (except if you think that Rousseau or Robespierre were liberals). In fact, it’s an essential component of the classical liberal tradition and its libertarian offshoot that individuals need intermediary institutions between them and Leviathan. (They would use “institution” instead of “structure,” though, to avoid structure-speak.) As moderate Hayek non-controversially writes in Vol. 2 of Law, Legislation, and Liberty–in a section called “The Importance of voluntary associations,”
Mactoul
Oct 20 2022 at 9:11pm
I speak not of Adam Smith but of von Mises and Ayn Rand (of cash nexus being only connection between man and man ).
I have previously commented on von Mises hostility to even voluntarily chosen religion as being coercive to freedom as he conceived it.
Jon Murphy
Oct 20 2022 at 9:15pm
Mises? I have no idea how you got any of that from his writings. Citations would be helpful.
Jon Murphy
Oct 20 2022 at 9:34pm
I went back to my copy of Mises. I state as an absolute fact you have badly misunderstood Mises. The very view you attempt to ascribe to him he calls a “myth” in Human Action; see Chapter VIII “The Human Society” of Human Action. In that same chapter, he says that it is wrong to say liberalism is hostile to religion (it is only hostile to theocracy). He also praises the importance of the family at length.
Jon Murphy
Oct 20 2022 at 9:37pm
Oh, and I also did a search for the “cash nexus” comment. That does not appear in Mises, as far as I can find it, nor in Rand. I only see it showing up in Marx or other socialist writings. Again, if you have a citation you can point to, great, but a Google search only shows Marx
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 21 2022 at 12:23am
Jon and Mactoul: “Cash nexus” is indeed a Marxist concept. Interestingly, it is relatively rare on Google search results; it may be disappearing with older generations. This is confirmed by Google’s Ngram Viewer: in books written in English, “cash nexus” grew from the middle of the 19th century to its peak in 1985. Imagine the horror: in the “cash nexus,” you spend the fruit of your labor on what you want, instead of being told what to consume and where to work! (Of course, Marx did believe that under communist nirvana, the last stage of communism, people would be free to both produce what they feel like and consume what they want! History suggests that it takes much more than 64 years [1990-1917] to get there.)
Knut P. Heen
Oct 18 2022 at 12:15pm
It seems to me that the new “identity” is nothing about identity (character, personality) but rather about belonging to some group. The new “identity” seems to be conformity. People identify as group members rather than as an individuals (gender, sexual orientation, nationality, skin color, religion, favorite sports team, the list is endless).
I identify as me and there are no clones of me. The closest to clones are probably my close family members, so family membership is probably the least crazy of the new “identity” stuff.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 22 2022 at 11:35am
Knut: Well said.
Jose Pablo
Oct 19 2022 at 10:46pm
Why “not having an identity” transforms human beings into slaves of the market?
and why “religion” or “family” or “gender” protect us from slave hood?
I don’t follow this reasoning. It seems like pure empty rhetoric to me. I don’t even know what a “slave of the market” is.
And if I think about “actual slaves” they had family and religion and, sure enough, a clearly defined gender. What they probably did not have were “individual independent identity” (is there any other kind?), precisely the one that Meloni seems to pretend to abolish.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 20 2022 at 11:32am
Jose: We could add, “what wrong with a market identity?” And if having a market identity makes you a slave of the market, why would not (a fortiori!) a national identity make you a slave of the nation, that is, of the state?
Jeff
Oct 21 2022 at 1:17pm
Isn’t the more dangerous mirage the idea that each individual can, as you put it, “choose his own identity”?
The truth is that most of my identity is fixed and not something I had any choice in. I didn’t choose a single one of the three billion odd base pairs in my genome. I didn’t choose where I was born, or how tall I would become, or how intelligent I would be. I didn’t choose my parents or my siblings. For most of my formative years, they decided what I would learn, and where I would go, and who I would associate with. I didn’t consent to any of these choices; I can only hope that good ones were made for me.
So why the fascination with “choosing one’s own identity”? The idea that I am a tabula rasa, that I have limitless choice, that I can “be whatever I want to be” is a seduction and a lie. It is typically pushed not by those who want my freedom or my happiness but rather by those seeking to exploit my vanity in order to disguise a choice that is really some sort of bondage to their own agenda.
Jon Murphy
Oct 21 2022 at 1:38pm
Your comment reminds me of a lyric from the song “Free Will” by Rush: “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
It is certainly true that we face constraints. But many of the constraints you mention (eg hight) is not part of one’s identity.* We do get to choose how we react and adjust to those constraints. Those choices shape our identity. I have an identical twin and yet he and I have always been very different. We made different choices despite facing the same constraints.
Do we have absolute, 100%, constraint free choice? Of course not. We never do. But we do get to decide how we act. We are neither tabula rasa nor Fate’s playthings.
*Even if it were, I’d argue one can choose it. Pay me enough and I can make you as short as you want.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 21 2022 at 8:12pm
Jeff: Jon said the essential. There is no tabula rasa, but it is not because your choice set is limited (as it always is and will always be) that you have no choice. You choose to be a mountain climber or not even if gravity is a huge constraint. Whatever your genetic makeup and your experiences up to now, you can still choose whether to buy a Ford or a GM (at the same price). And you know that you could decide to throw the book you are reading through the window if you wanted to. You can never predict, except with some margin or error, the choices of a single individual; you can only do so, with standard rationality assumptions, in the aggregate.
Despite all this or because of all this, there is something inspiring in James Buchanan’s optimistic sentence (his emphasis):
(He may have become a bit less universally optimistic later in his life.)
Jose Pablo
Oct 22 2022 at 8:45am
The distinction between your “three billion odd base pairs in my genome” + your parents and siblings (and mentors) choices on “what I would learn, and where I would go, and who I would associate with.” AND “me” is an interesting one. Afterall, the first part can be understood as a definition of “me”
But your argument seems to be akin to “since I have been beaten since I was born, it should be ok to be beaten for the rest of my life” or “since I can only choose among 5 different car models, I would be better off with no choice at all”. I don’t follow that rational.
I should have the choice of not being what I don’t want to do: not being a Russian soldier in a Ukrainian front because of somebody else’s understanding of my identity, or not being a taxpayer in the US for the same reason. Not having any obligation of being part of a group I haven’t decide to be part of. Not being bound by any obligation I have not voluntarily (and expressly) agreed to.
And if this has not been the case in my past, that’s an additional reason for starting tomorrow. Not, by any means, a sign of me forfeiting my freedom to choose in the future (the only place where this freedom is relevant).
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 22 2022 at 11:18am
Jose: This is a brilliant comment.
Jeff
Oct 23 2022 at 2:45pm
I dont have anything *against* choice, I just think it’s a bizarre idol to worship, especially since, scientifically speaking, it’s not even clear what exactly that supposed choice subsists in. Our bodies and and brains are physical entities that would seem to be constrained by physical laws. Even if a person’s actions are not entirely predictable, it’s not clear how that resolves the conundrum, since truly unpredictable actions (such as Pierre’s example of a man abruptly throwing a book through a window) would seem to be more suggestive of someone in the grip of mental illness rather than paradigms of the exercise of free will.
It just seems that these concepts that form the bedrock of utilitarianism—ideas of utter rootlessness and self-determination—feel rather artificial and not especially helpful in offering a compelling account of the human experience.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 23 2022 at 7:16pm
Jeff: Big topic, but your label of “utilitarianism” for the position I defend is not correct. Britannica‘s definition is quite right (note the crucial parenthetical bit at the end):
My own position, like that of Buchanan and probably (perhaps surprisingly) Hayek, would be more Kantian—although Buchanan has a attractive philosophy of his own. His little book Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative is well worth reading. Of course, The Limits of Liberty is unavoidable. I don’t think that many economists who take seriously the impossibility of interpersonal utility comparisons would define themselves as utilitarians (except perhaps as rule utlitarians). Suggesting that welfare economics is utilitarian neglects this last point.
Jeff
Oct 23 2022 at 11:44pm
Sorry, I thought I typed “libertarianism”. Either a brain fart or a bad autocorrect!
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 24 2022 at 12:00pm
Jeff: OK, it makes more sense. Errare humanum est. Self-determination is certain a normative or at least methodological foundation of libertarianism and classical liberalism. Rootlessness would have to be qualified (except if the roots are the strings of a puppet!).
Joseph
Oct 20 2022 at 5:58pm
Have you read the full text of her speech? I have a different interpretation of what she said. I believe she was talking about an attempt to break existing social norms, break the notion of a family as a source of values passed to new generations. It is quite obvious that this has been happening for a while.
I have problems with some other parts of her speech, but not this one.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 23 2022 at 11:27am
Joseph: Thanks for your comment. To your first question, no. If you have a link to an (acceptable) English translation of her speech, our readers and I would benefit from it. It may be useful to recall that the motto “God, Family, Fatherland” (note the slightly different order than has Meloni’s) has a history: it was also the motto of the collaborationist French State (in Vichy) under Nazi occupation.
Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa Pérez
Oct 22 2022 at 8:09pm
One of the most worrying aspects of so-called National Conservatsim as an ideology is that nationalism is at risk of devolving into mere statism, either because the nationalism is a component of an explicitly statist political program (like Peronism), or because of policies that, however unintentionally, end up increasing both the power and centralization of the State. Not a lawlike and rulelike State, but a lawless, ruleless State — in the extreme, it can devlove into a kind of “La Nation, c’est moi” Bonapartism, c.f. Argentina under Perón and Spain under Franco.
This is certainly problematic from a purely (European) liberal point of view for obvious reasons, such as the completely misguided obsession with reviving “industrial policy” (the terrible CHIPS Act is just an example). But it should also be worrying from a purely (European) conservative point of view, since a nationalistic statism not only crowds out private economic activity, but it also crowds out and hollows out “community, moral authority, hierarchy, and the sacred” (Nisbet’s phrase not mine) in favor of the Nation (with a capital ‘N’) as represented and embodied (Hobbes) in the State, and such a State, built up by nationalism, can just as easily be turned into an instrument of “individualism, equality, moral release, and rationalist techniques of organization and power” (Nisbet).
Comments are closed.