The battle of ideas is not over but entering a new and more interesting phase, according to Danny Kruger, special adviser to Conservative Party leader David Cameron MP. In the late 20^th century, politics was the clash between Liberty on one hand and Equality on the other – a battle over the respective roles of the individual and the state. This remains the basic axis of our politics. But rather than a straightforward clash between Liberty and Equality, politics today is a contest for possession of the principle beyond them both: Fraternity. 

In his booklet On Fraternity, published by the independent think-tank Civitas, Kruger sketches the philosophical framework of the new battle of ideas, drawing on the writings of Locke, Burke and Hegel. He argues that Liberty, not Equality, is the natural ally of Fraternity, and that individual freedom, not state coercion, best protects the institutions of belonging and promotes the habits of solidarity.

Social desertification

Kruger argues that Britain is suffering ‘social desertification’ – a process that began in the 1980s as hundreds of local institutions, non-commercial and quasi-commercial, were swept away in the flood of reform. Small high-street grocers and bakers disappeared. Family-run pubs were subsumed into giant chains. Whitehall desolated local government, and turned a blind eye to the steady erosion of the family and civil society by the cult of individual freedom. He argues that this trend has grown greatly since the Conservatives left office, and is apparent in the rates of family breakdown and the prevalence of drug addiction and violent, alcohol-fuelled crime; in the neglect of the old and the precocious sexuality of children; in the cult of vicarious narcissism which is ‘reality TV’; in the popular addiction to shopping as a means of self-definition, and in the astronomical scale of private debt which is necessary to maintain the shopping habit (pp.2-3).

Kruger identifies three trends which are contributing to social desertification. First, a widening gap between rich and poor; second, ‘a slow but profound collapse of the relationship between the generations’ as ‘the vast army of the retired and soon-to-retire are in conflict with our increasingly strident and alienated youth, not only for material resources and political power, but also – just as important – for cultural airtime and national respect.’; and third, ‘the presence of large communities with different national origins and, therefore, alternative cultural traditions’ (p.5).

Fraternity not equality

What should our response be to these three trends? The answer of the Left is ‘equality’, our common submission to the central state: in Kruger’s words, ‘a great steel citadel to house everyone together and equally’. But the effect is to break up the social contexts and relationships which give meaning to the individual’s life: family, neighbourhood and nation.

Kruger argues instead for fraternity: 

‘It is not our common submission to the central state that will help us live together, but our various and overlapping memberships of a far larger and more diverse range of associations… Fraternity is the sphere of belonging. It is the sphere of society itself – the space between the liberal individual and the egalitarian state. In an age of big government and unbridled consumerism, people are searching for the local and particular, for a politics beyond power and money. This is the field of civil society. Here people congregate for all the business and pleasure of life, performing the transactions of love and profit which make the nation grow. These transactions are, or should be, private, mediated where mediation is necessary through independent institutions, constructed and maintained by free people’ (p.3).

Implications for Conservative policy

Kruger sketches the philosophical framework for Conservative policymaking. He argues for further reform of the public services, to ‘change state institutions into social ones by a sort of reverse alchemy – artificial into natural matter’ (p.8).

This will mean a larger role for independent organisations, non-profit as well as commercial, in the delivery of public goods. He writes:

‘Rather than the large, uniform outposts of central government, imagine a community populated by small, variable, local institutions, responding not to central direction but to local demand. Imagine a neighbourhood in which the schools, medical centres and welfare agencies are governed by local people; imagine if each county’s police force were accountable not to the Home Office but to the people of the county itself. Imagine if social action were not the responsibility of what Alexis de Tocqueville, writing about the increasingly centralised European states of his day, called ‘a powerful stranger called the government’, but of individuals, families and communities themselves.’ (p.8)

Marriage should be supported and a European constitution resisted

He calls for a recognition of positive family formation in the tax and benefit system, to help people realise their aspirations for durable relationships through the active promotion of marriage, social (rather than statutory) support for singe parents, and stronger measures to compel paternal responsibility:

‘The nuclear family… requires civil recognition and protection to keep it safe in wider society. And that is what marriage is for… statutory recognition of marriage … actually helps keep the state away from families… for not only do intact families tend to rely less on state support, but even those families that do need help suffer less intrusion if the parents are married… Marriage deserves approbation in the fiscal and legal codes, to change incentives, and make it in men’s interests to do the right thing. The opposite of marriage – abandoning mother and child – deserves harsh disapprobation’.(pp.77-79)

He also calls for a revival of the principle of national self-determination in the face of globalisation, arguing that the process of European political integration threatens the peaceful settlement between the nation and the government:

‘The European Union … poses a serious threat to liberty. The attempt to impose on Britain, for the first time in our history, a written Constitution – written in Brussels, no less, under the supervision of a Frenchman – was not simply an exercise in duplicity by the elected government. It is an attempt to undo the Revolution Settlement of 1688-89… and revert to the totalitarian concept of statehood urged by Thomas Hobbes.’ (p.86)

Danny Kruger is special adviser to David Cameron MP, the leader of the Conservative Party and was formerly chief leader writer at The Daily Telegraph.

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‘On Fraternity: Politics beyond liberty and equality’ by Danny Kruger is available from Civitas, 77 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 2EZ, tel 020 7799 6677, www.civitas.org.uk, price £10.00 inc. pp.

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