I was reading the new post on Substack from Aurelian last night, entitled Mere Anarchy. In it, I noted he said (I use the pro-noun appropriately: I am aware that the author is male):
[These arguments] are all logically deducible from the ultra-individualist, almost autistic, mindset that Liberalism at its worst entails, and it may be worth saying just a word about that first.
Any system of radical individualism reduces relations with other people to one of three sorts. Either they are competitors, and thus a challenge to the Liberal ego and to its personal and financial freedom, or they are subordinates, to be used to secure more personal and financial benefits for yourself, or finally they are Non-Playing Characters, to be manipulated, ordered around, remonstrated with and legislated for, such that the world that results is closer to your vision of how it should be. This is to say that in a Liberal society there are no traditional links of family, community friendship, even mutual commitment. There are only coincidences of interest, to be exploited for as long as they last, and then to be abandoned. (The disastrous argument that “the personal is political” extends this thinking to personal relations, which are then seen as the equivalent of political or business alliances based purely and temporarily on mutual self-interest.)
This set me off on a train of thought. The question I asked myself was:
How does the liberal exist in the politics of care? Are the terms reconcilable?
And now, to admit that the rest of this post is something unprecedented here: I threw this question at ChatGPT and, so liked the response, I am sharing it here. I have not done this before, but there has to be a first for everything, and on this occasion, the provocations produced do, I think, justify this. So please note that what follows is not my work; I simply set the ball rolling and have not edited the response in any way:
Yes — the liberal can exist within a politics of care. But only if liberalism is stripped back to its best moral instincts and prevented from defaulting to its worst institutional habits.
So the terms are reconcilable, but not automatically compatible.
1. The problem: liberalism is morally attractive but institutionally thin
At its best, liberalism begins with a profoundly important claim:
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the individual matters
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coercion requires justification
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power is dangerous
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minorities need protection from majorities
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freedom of thought, speech and association are essential
Those are not “anti-care” claims. They are often prerequisites for care — because without freedom, care turns into paternalism, discipline, or control.
But liberalism becomes hostile to a politics of care when it makes two moves:
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it treats society as an aggregation of individuals, rather than a set of relationships and dependencies
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it treats the market as the default allocator of value, resource and reward
That's where it goes wrong.
2. The politics of care starts where liberalism is weakest: dependency
A politics of care begins with a fact that liberal political economy routinely sidelines:
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humans are dependent and interdependent
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care is not marginal; it is foundational
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vulnerability is not exceptional; it is universal across the life course
The “liberal subject” is too often imagined as competent, informed, rational, and able to contract freely.
But care ethics says: that's not how life works.
So the politics of care is not anti-liberal in a moral sense. It is anti-liberal abstraction.
3. Reconciling them requires a shift in what counts as “freedom”
Classical liberalism tends to define freedom as non-interference (negative liberty).
Politics of care requires freedom to be defined as capability (effective liberty), meaning:
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freedom from want
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freedom from fear
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freedom from domination (including economic domination)
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freedom to participate fully in society
That requires institutions.
And that is where orthodox liberalism tends to panic — because it has historically feared the state more than it fears private power.
4. The liberal can exist — but must stop pretending markets are neutral
You cannot reconcile liberalism with care if liberalism continues to treat:
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property rights as primary
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contract as morally sufficient
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markets as efficient and therefore legitimate
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inequality as tolerable if procedurally generated
A politics of care insists instead that:
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power is power, whether exercised by state, employer, landlord, or creditor
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markets distribute not just goods but status, security, health, and life chances
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exploitation is not an “accident” but a likely outcome when bargaining power is unequal
So the liberal exists in the politics of care only if liberalism becomes serious about economic power.
5. The caring liberal is possible — but looks more like Beveridge than Hayek
A liberal politics of care would emphasise:
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the rule of law and rights as protections against all dominating power
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universal public services as the infrastructure of freedom
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a macroeconomy designed to maintain social and environmental capital, not maximise consumption
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taxation as a civic obligation to sustain collective capacity
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democracy as a caring institution (not merely a voting mechanism)
This kind of liberalism is less “market liberalism” and more:
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social liberalism
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civic republicanism
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solidaristic constitutionalism
It is liberalism that recognises relationship, not just choice.
Conclusion
Are the terms reconcilable? Yes — but only by rejecting the liberal habit of pretending that autonomy is the natural human state and the market is a morally neutral institution.
Put simply:
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liberalism needs care to become realistic about human life
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care needs liberalism to protect against coercion and paternalism
So there is a viable synthesis — but it is not neoliberalism with nicer language. It is a fundamentally different political economy, in which care is the central public purpose and liberty is understood as the ability to live well, not merely the ability to be left alone.
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Point No 5 is very good. Beveridge was in some respects a “classical” liberal but the events of the 1920s and 1930s showed to him what happens when there is insufficient government in an industrial state. Hayek, radicalised by the events in Austria (hated socialism and the nazis) auto-attacked anything that looked liked “more government”. Broken record: Innes in “Late Soviet Britain” did a good job demolishing, formally, both the neo-libs and liberalism. She used some of the points you mentioned, e.g.: “The “liberal subject” is too often imagined as competent, informed, rational, and able to contract freely” (the equivalent in ele eng: “first we will base our calcs on wires with no resistance..” etc).
ChatGPT can be useful in quickly “pulling threads together”.
Got to hand it to ChatGPT – that’s a pretty impressive and coherent synthesis.
I agree with the statement of point 3. But I disagree that “classical liberalism” defines itself as only negative freedom. It didn’t. It confusingly mixed up positive and negative freedom.
Accepted
What that tells me, is that your influence is far wider than perhaps we realise.
Where is ChatGPT getting all that from?
Or is it that because you give ChatGPT such a vigorous daily FTF workout, when you use it to do research, you have singlehandedly “sweetened the ChatGPT well”?
Makes a nice change from AI slop and GROK-PORN/GROK-CSAM.
🙂
What RobertJ’s question really points to is something more interesting than whether an AI has been “sweetened.” Large language models don’t learn from individual users — but they do reflect the shape of the public conversation they’re trained on. And that’s the part worth noticing.
If a prompt about liberalism and care produces a coherent synthesis, it’s because those ideas are already circulating strongly enough — in academic work, civic discourse, and yes, in places like this blog — that the model can draw the threads together. In other words, the influence isn’t mystical. It’s cumulative.
That’s the real story here.
When you push certain arguments consistently — about care, dependency, power, institutions, and the limits of market liberalism — they stop being fringe and start becoming part of the intellectual landscape. Then they show up in unexpected places.
It’s a reminder that ideas travel further than we think.
And that the politics of care isn’t a niche project — it’s becoming a vocabulary that even the machines can now assemble.
If anything, that should encourage us.
It means the ground is shifting.
And it means the work being done here is already shaping the wider conversation, whether through people, platforms, or — occasionally — an AI that’s been trained on the world we’re all trying to change.
Since yesterday I’ve had opportunities to talk to 5 people face to face, about “the politics of care”. A visiting tradesman, and a church men’s group. All v positive conversations which should result in visits.
Good to read Paul’s comment on AI, my understanding of AI is minimal, so that was a useful correction.
Thanks
Hi Richard. I concur with the opinion above, expressed by Paul Hume, regarding AI not ‘learning’ from one single person’s blog postings.
But, more power to your elbow Richard… or whichever bits of your anatomy power such a skill in making succinct, cogent arguments. Like Heineken lager, you “refresh the parts other writers cannot reach”.
It’s always a pleasure to read or listen to your blog… apart from the odd Miss Pelling. For that, blame Siri… like watt I do!
I’m hoping to be well enough for travel to Cambridge on 28th February so that I can hear yourself & Clive Parry speak at ‘Funding the Future’ conference.
Failing that, your appearance as a guest speaker in Edinburgh on 21st March will be interesting. Please let everyone know where & at what time, just as soon as details are finalised.
Way back in 2019, I enjoyed hearing you speak at the CS Forum in Glasgow about ‘A Green New Deal for Scotland’. Here’s hoping the weather in Edinburgh is kinder to us all than on that wet & windy night.
Thanks, Ron.
I will post deta8lsbof Scotland asap.
Thanks Richard; Edinburgh in March will be good but I’m still hoping to make it to Cambridge at the end of February.
Like your near neighbour, JudithB, I’m keen to meet others from our ‘Community of Commentors’ (Commies?).
I was intrigued by RobertJ’s follow-up post yesterday, the one citing himself as having mentioned Funding the Future during casual conversations. Here in Scotland, Robin McAlpine at Common Weal is a great advocate for achieving Independence by each of us influencing ‘just-one-friend’. Ideally, ‘Just-One’ will then persuade another friend until John Smith’s “settled will of the Scottish people” is better settled.
One friend at a time? Perhaps we’ll all end up as Friends… like you & I Richard.
Btw, I was delighted at the magnaminity shown by RobertJ in acknowledging Paul Hume’s interpretation of how AI responds to cumulative input. If only THAT OTHER RobertJ was a good guy!
Robin is a friend of mine – and a geat guy who I am proud to have worked with.