Political Theory

H01(a) - Radical and Critical Political Economy

Date: Jun 3 | Time: 08:30am to 10:00am | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Robert Sparling (University of Ottawa)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Cindy Holder (University of Victoria)

Liberal Socialism: Property, Political Liberty, and the Tendency Towards Injustice: Neil Hibbert (University of Saskatchewan)
Abstract: In his remarkable book, John Rawls: Reticent Socialist, William Edmundson builds on Rawls’ application of his theory of justice as an evaluative metric for institutional regimes. Upon its application as guidelines for regime evaluation, Edmundson concludes that “liberal socialism emerges as the sole regime type capable of realizing justice as fairness.” This paper engages with Edmundson’s interpretation of the institutional requirements of Rawls’ theory of justice and compares the political tendencies of liberal socialist and welfare state regime-types. Edmundson contends that the welfare state ““tends inevitably…towards injustice” because it cannot “guarantee the fair value of political liberties.” Only by constitutionally securing public ownership of the major productive assets can liberal societies avoid the “fact of domination” of powerful economic interests that animate the tendency to injustice. I argue Edmundson fails to show that justice as fairness decisively weighs in favour of socialism against a social democratic welfare state. Nothing definitional about the latter precludes reciprocity, equalizing opportunities and human, if not productive, capital, or legislative efforts towards securing fair value of political rights, such as publicly funded elections or donation limits. These, like the development of the welfare state itself, will face considerable resistance in any case and Edmundson’s constitutional socialism won’t decisively smooth the political path to justice.

Trust in Me: Community Land Trust's use of trust as a democratic practice: Madalyn Hay (University of Toronto), Torrey Shanks (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Community Land Trusts (CLTs) are community groups that work to appropriate property in a given community and use it for the benefit of the community; in urban centres CLTs often provide affordable housing and green-space for communities experiencing displacement while rural CLTs often acquire farmland for accessible community farming. There are 41 land trusts in Canada. They serve a variety of purposes from anti-gentrification, displacement, and homelessness strategies, to land and green-space access. Despite the variety of missions, in all cases CLTs use the language of a ‘trust’ to describe their political practice. They explicitly invoke the legal trust—a property arrangement whereby a trustee manages property on behalf of the beneficiary—to describe their governance strategy. People in positions of power in CLTs understand themselves as acting on behalf of the community, of being entrusted by the community. This is true despite often not legally being a trust; most Canadian CLTs are charities or non-profits. The trust therefore performs some type of political work for CLTs which has not previously been explained. This paper therefore proposes to explore how CLTs us the trust to create their community level democratic governance. It concludes that CLTs us the trust to keep their governance accountable to the community. The trust is a democratic practice that creates thick bonds of obligation between the board and community. It reminds the board that they only have their position by virtue of the community's trust in them and that this trust is revocable. CLTs therefor us the trust to keep the board accountable to the community and to ensure they act to realize the community's self-expressed interests and policy goals.

Are central banks democratically legitimate? Does it matter?: Aleksander Masternak (McGill University)
Abstract: “Money is politics” but central banks, the most powerful regulators of money, are technocratic institutions that are intentionally insulated from political pressures (Carruthers and Babb 1996; Kirshner 2003; McNamara 2002). Central banks are democratically legitimate, despite their insulation, because independence is functional for fighting inflation (Rogoff 1985). Central banks remain legitimate as long as they stick to their narrow mandates and the outputs of their monetary policy are not significantly distributive (Dietsch 2020; Nicoli 2017). The financial crisis challenged the legitimacy of central banks because it led them to introduce Quantitative Easing that fell outside their narrow mandates and was significantly redistributive (Dietsch, Claveau, and Fontan 2018). Still, the pre-crisis monetary policy paradigm remains relatively intact (Johnson, Arel-Bundock, and Portniaguine 2019). Ever since the crisis, critics have pushed for reforms of monetary governance by producing a diversity of critiques organised around the democratic legitimacy of central banks (Braun 2016; Buckle 2023; Dietsch 2020; Fernández-Albertos 2015; van ’t Klooster 2020). These critiques are compelling but making them does not help to precipitate reform. Simply put, central banks are not legitimate and it does not matter. The critics’ interventions are futile because their reformist focus leads them to replicate a certain idealism which allows their targets, the central bankers, to be unaffected by their criticism. If the critics are serious about democratising central banks, they should forego their reformism and embrace relinquishing central bank independence. To further this end, critics should focus on forms of power inherent to central banks.

Mengzian Socialism as Remedy to Imperialism: Devin Ouellette (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Kōtoku Shūsui 幸德秋水 (1871-1911) was Japan’s foremost public intellectual during the first decade of the 20th century known for his leadership role in Japan’s anti-war movement, which culminated in the publication of his 1901 book, Imperialism: Monster of the Twentieth Century. One of the earliest general accounts of imperialism to ever be written, Imperialism advanced a novel argument concerning the nature, origins, and solution to imperialism as a global problematic. While existing scholarship has focused on the socialist components of Kōtoku’s anti-imperialism, this paper examines Kōtoku’s use of Confucian philosophy, most notably the Mengzi, in his critique of imperialism. This paper argues that Kōtoku articulates a “Mengzian-socialist” political theory which hybridizes Mengzi’s moral psychology and theory of political legitimacy as residing in the welfare of the people (mínběn 民本) with socialism’s commitments to international solidarity and concern for the material conditions of the working class. In so doing, Kōtoku’s reimagines the moral-political basis of legitimate government; a reimagining which highlights the politics of collective identity formation during the turbulent times of Meiji Japan.