|
The Market of Ideas in Manuel Menezes de Sequeira Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. […] But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. John Stuart Mill, On John Stuart Mill was right in this, even if
he defended freedom of speech in a utilitarian way and not from first
principles: freedom of speech is indeed indispensable. So what is its status in The main sources of the ideas which in Thus, it is perhaps natural that there is not
a single political party which may be said in any meaningful way to be
liberal. Of the two main political
parties, the Socialist and the Social Democrat Parties, the latter may be
said to contain some strands of liberal thought in its fabric, but remains
essentially social democrat, despite its considerable evolution since the
Marxist times of the April Revolution.
To this it must be added that the Bloco de Esquerda (Left Block), which is a coalition of
extreme-left parties, including the Trotskyist PSR
(Revolutionary Socialist Party) and the Marxist and communist UDP (Popular
Democratic Union), has an intelligent strategy which consists of presenting
itself as a champion of personal freedom, having chosen gay rights, abortion
rights, and sexual freedom as banners.
Its message is extremely attractive to some would-be libertarians
which are not mature enough to accept the so called economic freedoms,
loathed by this essentially communist party.
In a nutshell, I would say that the Bloco de
Esquerda appeals to a certain lifestyle of eternal
adolescence which is becoming fashionable in The cultural scene is, with very few
exceptions, productive of a socializing thought which may have something to
do with the fact that the majority of its members depend on state subsidies
for their activities. The case of the
movies is perhaps one of the most paradigmatic. As would be expected, rare state subsidized
movies are produced having the public in mind, which has led to the sometimes
unfair association of Portuguese movies with bad or irrelevant cinema. The latest and most famous example is “Snow
White”, a movie without images by the late João César Monteiro. As to the media, an enormous evolution
occurred since the revolution, when most of the media companies were
nationalized. Today the press is not
under direct control of the state.
However, there is at least one very important exception: two of the
four broadcasted television channels in Despite the freedom of press, it was only
recently that a shadow of pluralism reached the newspapers, traditionally
dominated by left-wing journalists.
Two of our reference newspapers, Público and
Diário de Notícias, have
started during the last years to show more balanced editorials and opinion
columns. However, liberal thought is
still the exception in these as in other newspapers. As I said, a substantial amount of the ideas
which reach the general public in Portugal have their origin in the academia,
which naturally has some intersection with the politicians, media, and
cultural worlds. The Portuguese
academia is the area which I know better, and hence I will centre the rest of
my presentation on this topic. Education in The Portuguese Constitution, whose preamble
states “the decision of Portuguese People […] to open the way to a socialist
society”, allows the existence of privately owned schools. But these schools must either follow a far
from minimal curriculum which is imposed by the Ministry of Education, or
subject their curricula to official recognition. The intention is clear: “The State shall
establish a network of public [meaning state owned] educational institutions
to meet the needs of the whole population”, “the State shall recognise and
supervise private and co-operative education, in accordance with the law”,
and “in the implementation of its policy for education, it is the duty of the
State a) to ensure compulsory and free basic education for all, [and] b) to
institute a public system and develop the general system of pre-school
education”. The constitutional
obligation of the state is thus to provide its own education. It is not even the case that state owned
schools are created in a subsidiary way, when and if private schooling fails
to serve certain regions or is insufficient to cover the education
demands. On the contrary, private
schooling is merely tolerated and kept under close scrutiny. Needless to say, the excellent results of
most private schools when compared to state schools is irrelevant for all
those that defend state schooling. Of course, Stuart Mill was also right in
this: A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. John Stuart Mill, On The market of ideas, for children of an age
where ideas leave their strongest mark, is thus very far from being free,
regardless of the fact that state controlled education in Portugal is very
far from being “efficient and successful”… At the university level the panorama is
slightly better, but not much more.
Most academics are profoundly anti-liberal. Several factors having to do with the
organization of university education in 1. Despite the recent growth in the
number of privately owned universities, the majority of the Portuguese
students enrol in state owned universities (about 72%). 2. Privately owned universities are
financed mostly through student tuitions.
Since the state specifies minimum and maximum fees for its own
universities, which are independent of the programs offered and substantially
lower than would be necessary if schools were not directly subsidized,
private universities have a hard time trying to compete. This also means that private universities
tend to offer only relatively low-cost programs, such as law, and to avoid
expensive programs, such as engineering or medicine. 3. The so called democratic
management of schools, which is also a constitutional requirement, renders
university management dependent on the immediate interests of students. Students and non-teaching staff still have
a majority of seats in most decision bodies inside universities. This has created a system which does not
stimulate responsibility. For
instance, in some universities the students have a total of three exam
attempts at the end of each course, to which one must add that students may
repeat courses a large number of times in successive years. 4. The state has a substantial
control of the universities. All
programs offered in state as well as in private universities must be approved
by the Ministry of Science and Superior Education. The maximum number of students which may
enrol in a given program is decided by the ministry. Even though the state schools have control
over who they hire, the total number of teaching positions, according to
their degree, is also determined by the state. 5. Teaching staff wages do not depend
on performance or on the responsibilities assumed: they depend almost
exclusively on academic degrees and increase automatically with time. 6. The accreditation of the programs
offered in the universities is only slightly more liberal. 7. A subtle distinction is
established between recognizing a programme, which is a responsibility of the
state, and accrediting it for a certain profession, which is a power the
state confers to professional guilds in an exclusive way. It is thus true that accreditation power in
its strict sense is not directly in the hands of the state. But in its widest sense, accreditation
power is shared between the Ministry of Science and Superior Education and
professional guilds which for all practical purposes cannot be considered
state-independent. This organization of university education
obviously does not promote either student or professor responsibility. Since participants in such an organization
have a lot to gain in the maintenance of the illiberal status quo, most of the opinions that reach the general public
regarding education policy are also in favour of maintaining things as they
are. Most of the few critique voices,
as would be expected, stem from members of private universities, which do not
even have a seat of Council of Portuguese University Rectors. Of course, we all know that curricula are not
immune to the ideology of the academics involved. This is most obvious in the human studies,
but it is also patent in the technologies and natural sciences. In computer science, for instance, which
one would think considerably impervious to ideology, anti-liberal thought has
made some notable incursions. The
latest example is the Open Source and Free Software movements. The evolution of the Linux operating system
and of the GNU software, as well as of free or open source software in
general, does demonstrate that these ideas have quite a few merits. However, they are not promoted for their
own sake, or for the sake of security, quality, efficiency, etc. They are promoted because they are seen as
specifically anti-Microsoft and generally as anti-capitalism and
anti-liberal. In this respect it is
revealing to read the footnote to the Left Block party site: “The Left Block
site was developed in an Open Source, Bill Gates free, environment”. The conclusion must thus be that university
education is also far from being free from state control and that in such an
environment it is reasonable to expect that most of the ideas, most of the
opinions and theories produced are of an illiberal nature. All in all, I would say that the market of
ideas in Junho de
2004 Manuel
Menezes de Sequeira |
[1] I will use the word “liberal” in its European
sense, not in the sense in which it is used in the