[Mb-civic] When multiculturalism is a nonsense - Martin Wolff

[Alexander Harper]

 Good, thoughtful article, as ever, from Martin Wolff (FT)
AlB

Martin Wolf: When multiculturalism is a nonsense
>By Martin Wolf
>Published: August 30 2005 20:11 | Last updated: August 30 2005 20:11
>>
What are the limits of multiculturalism? How far is cultural diversity compatible with a working society, by which I mean people’s ability to live side-by-side peacefully and co-operatively? This question arises for the world as a whole. But it arises far more sharply when people live in the same country.

We are cultural animals: someone without a culture is not human. But the cultures we possess vary enormously. Indeed, that variability, over time and space, is the great evolutionary advantage of humanity. Instead of changing biologically over millennia, human beings can change culturally over decades.

Cultural diversity is, therefore, both desirable and inevitable. So, too, is cultural change. Equally, cultures can differ sharply even within a well-established and successful national community. The culture of the English working class is different from that of the middle and upper classes. A society within which there was only one culture would be at best dull and at worst stagnant.

Yet, however welcome cultural diversity may be, one has also to appreciate its limits. Human beings, said Aristotle, are political animals. For a political community to flourish there must at least be agreement on the rules of the game. The notion of politics here is a broad one. It includes the methods for choosing the holders of executive, judicial and legislative power. It covers what they are entitled to do. It also concerns the rights of individuals against the state and fellow citizens. It concerns, in short, both the legitimacy and limits of power.

A society without agreement on these questions will be either repressive or on the verge of civil war. Alas, neither is an abnormal condition: much of Latin America oscillates between one state and the other. The UK, however, is quite different. It has a claim to be the most successful of today’s relatively large polities to have evolved from pre-modern times. Its political culture has sparked imitations across the globe, for it is the birthplace of parliamentary democracy.

What then is the contemporary political culture of this polity? First, political authority derives from the people, to whom the government is accountable and by whom it is elected. Second, the law is human, not divine. Third, people accept the outcome of elections as legitimate. Fourth, citizens have an obligation of obedience to legitimately exercised authority. Fifth, individuals not groups, have political rights. Sixth, individuals are free in their political and religious opinions. Seventh, adult citizens, both male and female, have equal political and legal rights.

Yet the requirements of a shared political culture go beyond these formal preconditions. A democratic polity will only work if citizens’ identification with the community as a whole, or at least with the shared process, overrides their loyalty to a segment. Only then are they likely to accept as legitimate the outcome of elections decided against their wishes.

A multicultural society will be politically workable, therefore, only if it shares a broad political culture. It is for this reason that successful nations of immigrants, such as the US, possess a strong culture, built around a common language and allegiance to shared political institutions. What has emerged in the US is an imagined nation.

In the UK, however, or at least England, the nation grew. Because the overwhelming majority of the population was descended from those who had created the country over centuries, its values, identities and culture were theirs. No one had to define the political culture. They knew what it was, since it was the one they grew up with. Now, with large-scale immigration, this is no longer true.

The American and French response to the challenge of creating the needed identities (and so identification with the polity) has been to create a civic creed. Indeed, some might call it a civic religion. In both cases, the creed emphasises shared citizenship in an ideal republic that incarnates and promotes universal values.

This is not the British tradition. The British would, hitherto, have thought it unnecessary to promote the virtues of their institutions, since their superiority was self-evident. It was so self-evident that the only response of a civilised Briton was to denigrate them. Often, as a result, the only outspoken patriots, at least among the more literate classes, have been recent immigrants.

The British may hope that the influence of the country’s history and traditions will implant a shared culture effortlessly. But this time it is going to take effort. It is surely worth stating, and teaching, that one cannot be more than formally British without subscribing to the core political values of this remarkable community.

To suggest anything else is dangerous and demeaning. It is dangerous because it destroys political community. It is demeaning because it devalues citizenship. In this sense, at least, multiculturalism must be discarded as nonsense.

martin.wolf at ft.com
 
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