Republicanism, Liberalism, and Social Discipline

My conception of the coming of age in the 1780s has a lot to do with social discipline. Federalists who had fought "arbitrary" British authority came to feel that their responsibility was to establish and enforce order in the independent nation. These ambivalent drives relate to the classic problem of republicanism and liberalism in the political thought of the revolutionary period, for both sets of ideas contain strong but opposing prescriptions for social discipline.

Classical republicanism emphasises virtue, which is in most cases another word for self-discipline: moderation and disinterestedness are central. Republican institutions are meant to encourage or enforce these kinds of self-discipline - so that in fact we are really talking about social discipline (on this general point see Robin Hanson). Classical republican government is highly visible, and citizens are supposed to be acitvely engaged. Its forms of discipline are structured by mutual surveillance and the threat of censure.

Liberalism is obviously quite different: in fact, it appears to offer a great relaxation, or even elimination, of social discipline. Liberal capitalist citizens have few responsibilities: they are supposed to act in their own best interests. Yet the liberal society exercises its own, social discipline, beginning with the rule of law but extending to a set of conditions that organise people and communities around economic markets. The contraction of the public sphere, and loss of positive liberty, restrict citizens in general to acting out their roles as rational producers and consumers. This liberal, capitalist social discipline is invisible; the penalty for disobedience is poverty.