Prospect magazine runs an insightful monthly column http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/12/words-that-think-for-us-2/ in which the philosopher Edward Skidelsky examines the ways in which our vocabulary betrays more than we like to admit. The column, entitled ‘Words that think for us’, is like an updated meditation on Orwell’s justly-celebrated essay on ‘Politics and the English Language’. Skidelsky puts the language of everyday public life – ‘liberal’, ‘values’, ‘culture’, ‘inappropriate’ – under the microscope and in the process reveals the thinking, or lack of it, behind its use.
One word as yet unexposed by Skidelsky is ‘development’. Like its domestic equivalent, ‘progressive’, it is much used, especially by those on the left, and like ‘progressive’ it is too often left ill-defined. Everyone knows that countries need to develop. Nations the world over can conveniently, if not always easily, be classified as either ‘developed’ or ‘developing’. International development is such an obvious good that it is one of only two departments whose spending has been ring-fenced in advance of the coming spending review.
All of which rather invites the question – development for what? How are low-income countries ‘developing’? What is it that ‘developed’ ones have that others need? And why are these, rather than any other virtues, admirable?
This is not simply an academic question. As almost everyone acknowledges, if the level of resource usage current in ‘developed’ countries were to be replicated the world over, we would rapidly exhaust the planet’s capacity to sustain life as it does. ‘Development’ of that kind merely beckons resource wars and mass starvation. If we are so keen to talk about ‘development’, it would be well that we thought carefully about what we actually mean.
One of Skidelsky’s recurring themes is that clear moral commitments are often evacuated from our political language, leaving us with ‘the debased coin of the modern moral economy.’ Thus we use ‘unacceptable’ instead of ‘vulgar’, ‘values’ instead of ‘virtues’, ‘important’ as opposed to ‘good’. Such substitutions are often made for the best of reasons, to avoid political discourse from being tied up in – or by – particular, contested visions of the good. Better to talk about values, which we can define ourselves, than ‘virtues’, which demand some agreement on what is virtuous in the first place.
Unfortunately, however, this amounts to little more than trying to dodge an issue that will not disappear. Nowhere is this clearer than in the field of development policy, in which decisions today can affect lives and livelihoods for years, perhaps generations. If we want international development that is not only achievable and sustainable, but also actually desirable – development that genuinely contributes to the common good – we cannot ignore the question of what is the vision of the good to whose tune we are moving.
This is not just a difficult question but an uncomfortable one, as it demands we expose the moral commitments that, albeit usually invisibly, structure our politics. The question is due to be debated at the RSA tonight to mark the launch of a report, jointly-authored by the Christian development agencies Tearfund and CAFOD and the think tank, Theos. The report, Wholly Living: A new perspective on international development http://campaigndirector.moodia.com/Client/Theos/Files/WhollyLiving.pdf argues that political and economic thought, particularly as it relates to international development, is founded on an inadequate and ultimately harmful vision of what it means to flourish as a human being, a vision that is essentially acquisitive. This understands people as fundamentally independent, sovereign beings whose ultimate good lies in the maximisation of personal wealth, freedom and choice so that they can decide their own ends.
This, the report argues, is simply wrong. Wealth, freedom, and choice are all undoubtedly goods. It is better to be rich than poor, free than enslaved and to have choice than to be dictated to. But they are not ultimate goods and our obsession with them has resulted in a serious devaluation of the familial, social and environmental relationships that form us and that enable us to flourish as human beings. Without such enduring and committed bonds there is no human flourishing, no matter how much money and choice we have. Development that is not towards better relationships is not development at all.
Wholly Living argues that we need a richer, more realistic vision of human flourishing. Humans are fundamentally creative, productive, responsible, relational beings, who find their highest good in dealing generously with one another, not simply in the unfettered exercise of their personal freedom
The report argues this point from an explicitly Christian basis, drawing on biblical and Catholic Social Teaching, but it is careful to articulate its ideas in publicly-accessible language (creativity, generosity, etc) rather than theological abstractions. In this regard it is authentically rather than distinctively Christian.
This may not be enough for some people, who will deny that an issue as vast, nuanced and technically-complex as development policy should be open to any moral suasion, let alone that which is openly religious.
But that criticism is to miss the point. As Michael Sandel, the BBC’s 2009 Reith lecturer has spent a career arguing, “debates about justice and rights are often, unavoidably, debates about the purpose of social institutions, the goods they allocate, and the virtues they honour and reward. Despite our best attempts to make law neutral on such questions, it may not be possible to say what’s just without arguing about the nature of the good life.” (Justice: What’s the right thing to do? p.207)
If we want development policy to work for all – rather than simply set lower-income countries on a course that ends in the uniquely modern combination of wealth, comfort, debt, inequality, insecurity, overwork, and consumerism – we need to think carefully about what it means to flourish. And that means digging around amid the messy moral and spiritual foundations that underpin any political enterprise.
What is development for? at the RSA, 13th October. Details here: http://www.thersa.org/events/our-events/what-is-development-for
