Why Ideology is Sometimes Better than Pragmatism

There are so many things I find maddening about France: the bureaucracy, the seemingly arbitrary paternalism, the total lack of pragmatism; but there are also many things I admire about France: the high level of discourse, about both politics and culture, the architecture, the fashion (or more precisely, the way that everyone is aware of their physical presentation), and the sustained excellence of their baked goods. For a couple of months now I've been trying wrap my mind around what it is about the French mindset that is so different; this mindset that leads to such wonderful culture but also to the French's frustrating detachment from reality. I'd been groping around for words to fit my intuitions until I stumbled on an interview with Adam Gopnik this week. Gopnik is a writer for the New Yorker who lived in Paris for five years writing the Paris Diaries for the New Yorker. He subsequently published many of them as well as some other writing in his book Paris to the Moon. As Gopnik puts it, the biggest difference between America (but it could just as easily be Canada, or Quebec, or England) and France is “the weight you give empirical evidence in everyday argument and conversation.” In France empirical evidence is not that important, what is important is the argument, what is important is the rational, structured, road, from first principles, to the application. The clearest example of this for me is in politics. In Canadian and American politics everyone is an empiricist. Every politician claims that on the basis of empirical facts their program will bring about the best result for the country. Even President Bush, who we tend to think of as driven by unthinking ideology is essentially a pragmatist. Bush went to war in Iraq because he thought it would achieve his goal, because based on his understanding of the Middle-East, he believed that invading Iraq really could bring democracy to the region (or really would make him rich, or get oil for the U.S., or whatever). The reason Iraq is such a disaster is not because Bush had an incorrect theory or ideology, but because he was colossally ignorant about politics in Iraq and the Middle-East. Bush isn't an ideologue, he's just an incredibly ignorant pragmatist. Empiricism is so ingrained in us that a politician who proposed policies based on ideology – say that we should not have a Queen because that is a contradiction with the essential nature of a modern (in the sense of modernity) nation state – would seem completely absurd.

But that is exactly how politics is approached in France. Let me illustrate. 1968 was a tumultuous year both in the U.S. and in France. In the U.S. the anti-Vietnam war protests were gaining critical mass and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. radicalized some of the civil rights movement; in France students and workers rebelled against the old institutions, there were riots in Paris, Universities were occupied and the country is still ruled by the bequests of that movement. Recent coverage of 1968 in the U.S. tends to focus on MLK Jr., on the successes of the civil right movement, or on what remains to be done. Le Monde's coverage of Mai 1968 in France begins with an interview with a philosopher described as a theorist of the altermondialiste (which is like being anti-globalization, except not defining yourself by opposition, but by a third way) movement. I've been trying to understand what happened in 1968 but I am finding it very difficult because no one is writing about what happened, or what the actual consequences were for France. The thing is, those just don't matter in France, the way in which it shaped thoughts and ideas is far more important because those are the things that govern politics.

Today, as I was studying in the library with the desk lamp turned on, a library staff member came over and asked me to turn it off if I wasn't using it, for the sake of the environment. The library was fairly well lit and in truth I wasn't really using it, but one fluorescent desk lamp being lit for one extra hour is hardly going to melt the polar ice cap. So why did the library staff member feel the need to come over and tell me to turn it off? And why did he not feel it was necessary to shush the two students next to me who were talking? I think it all comes down to this ideological mindset; the environment is good, electricity is bad for the environment, ergo as a quasi-moral principle I should turn off the light. (It also has to do with another insight of Gopnik's, that the French grow up with and so are used to “the unappeasable power of arbitrary authority”, but that will have to wait for another day.)

There are a number of consequences to this philosophical approach to everything and not all of them are bad. It's one of the reasons that culture is so revered and, well, cultured. But in the realm of politics and public policy it seems like madness at first glance. How can you ever improve society if you don't bother with empirical results? It seems like a total rejection of the scientific revolution, as absurd as Democritus and Aristotle arguing about the nature of the atom without ever performing an experiment. And, ironically, it is a terrible idea in theory; but it actually works out all right in practice. France has all kinds of problems but a war in Iraq is not one of them. The thing about being ideological is that you can make the right decision even with the wrong facts. On the basis of the evidence that was presented to the world community just before the invasion of Iraq, there was a reasonable case for the war. In Canada there was serious debate about the war, we did not lightly refuse to aid our American allies. But in France the answer was obvious, of course they would not go to war, partly perhaps because of some reflexive anti-Americanness, but also because the facts didn't make much of a difference to the French. War was awful and that was enough for France. In a sense we do the same thing in our judicial system in Canada. We refuse to convict someone of a criminal offense unless they are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. We have made a value judgement that because conviction can have such severe consequences, and because justice is inevitably flawed, we would rather acquit a guilty man than convict an innocent one. Our whole criminal justice system is built on a moral judgement and on a recognition of fallibility. Our public policy debates do not operate that way. When going to war we never said: “yes there is a strong case for war but I still have a reasonable doubt”. We never said “yes there is a reasonable case for war but because of the awfulness of war we need more than a reasonable case.” The French model is much more resistant to reasonable arguments. Go through the archives of The Economist some day and you will realize that some very reasonable argument have been made for some pretty terrible ideas, and have swayed some very influential people. Sometimes, our intuitions get closer to the truth than any rational analysis. Of course, when you are walking through a supermarket with carts strewn all over the store because the aisles are too small to pass other shoppers, a little pragmatism might be helpful.