{"id":89185,"date":"2026-01-15T07:31:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T07:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=89185"},"modified":"2026-01-15T07:31:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T07:31:56","slug":"89185","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/01\/15\/89185\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberals and the politics of care"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was reading the new post on Substack from Aurelian last night, entitled Mere Anarchy<\/a><\/em>. In it, I noted he said (I use the pro-noun appropriately: I am aware that the author is male):<\/p>\n

[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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cthe personal is political\u201d 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.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This set me off on a train of thought. The question I asked myself was:<\/p>\n

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How does the liberal exist in the politics of care? Are the terms reconcilable?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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:<\/p>\n

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Yes \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

So the terms are reconcilable<\/i>, but not automatically compatible<\/i>.<\/p>\n

1. The problem: liberalism is morally attractive but institutionally thin<\/b><\/h3>\n

At its best, liberalism begins with a profoundly important claim:<\/p>\n