This article was first published by Daily Friend on 23 January 2025
“An enemy without a name is impossible to defeat on the battleground of ideas,” writes Andrew Doyle in his The New Puritans (2023). Those who fail to understand and operationalise this in the battle of ideas place themselves at an immediate disadvantage that enemies will and do exploit.
“Ideology” is a dirty word today, with virtually everyone regarding themselves as “pragmatists”. But the difference between a self-proclaimed pragmatist and an ideologue is that self-conscious ideologues are aware of their biases while “pragmatists”, often, are either lying to others or to themselves about theirs.
And your enemies certainly will not – ever – concede that you are in fact a “pragmatist”.
Ideology is simply a term that refers to the bundle of informed or uninformed ideas a person has (primarily) about political, legal, social, and economic systems. Anyone who has thought about these things irresistibly ends up having an ideology, no matter how basic. Nobody, except those who are entirely apolitical – an arguably impossible feat – can be said to be without ideology.
Everyone’s a pragmatist
There is a large group of people who fancy themselves exempt from this reality. While “pragmatist” is their preferred descriptor, they also sometimes say that they are “realists” or “centrists” who are led by the “evidence” and “data,” and strive for “balance” rather than ideology.
To be clear, there is such a thing as centrism, but depending on how this “centre” is defined, it is as ideological as any other ideology. To myself and many others, liberalism or (to use the American synonym) libertarianism, is centrism, because it rejects the authoritarianism that exists on both the so-called “left” and “right” in favour of freedom, deference, and harmony.
Charles Lajoie has constructed a pyramidic political spectrum that shows how, on this view, the ideology of liberty finds itself in “the middle” (albeit also at “the top”).
But to many self-proclaimed “pragmatists,” pragmatism takes on a ridiculous meaning: they are neither “left” nor “right” and they have no particular preferences about the political, legal, social, or economic system. Instead, they support whatever “works” to achieve good things.
The problem with this must be immediately evident. It is precisely in how someone decides what does and does not “work,” “works” in what sense, and “works” to achieve what, that a person’s ideology is formed.
There is certainly no serious contender in political discourse who will describe their own ideas as unpragmatic or somehow disconnected from reality.
Dr Ernst Roets rightly problematises excessive academic theorising about ideas without having regard to the reality of the matter, but ironically his thoughts in this regard are only correct in theory.
This is because everyone reading his article will nod along – as did I – agreeing with all his points. It will never be the reader who is guilty of privileging ideas over practice, it will always be other people who do so.
I take myself (and perhaps ourselves) as an example:
Liberal ideas about economic policy – free enterprise and private property – are submitted to be eminently pragmatic and immediately implementable. All it takes for most of these ideas to “work” is simply for a select few ministers and state employees to stay home and not go to the office. In this way, they will stop wreaking havoc on the economy and allow the market to fill the gaps they leave behind.
There is nothing more practical than ignoring your alarm in the morning and staying in bed. It requires no effort, no will, no capacity. Inaction is often all that liberal economics requires.
At the same time, I submit virtually every economic policy that the African National Congress (ANC), Communist Party (SACP), and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) adhere to, as being profoundly impractical and only theoretically implementable under the most idyllic social and cultural circumstances (such as northern Europe or East Asia). And I would argue that we have seen this play out in practice.
But anyone in the ANC, SACP, or EFF will believe the precise converse of this.
To them, it is liberalism that is idealistic and detached from South Africa’s reality, and their racial socialism that is most in touch. To them, liberals are the academic ideologues, and they are the pragmatists. To us, they are the academic ideologues, and we are the pragmatists.
The problem of appealing to “pragmatism”
It seems to me that to describe oneself as a “pragmatist” (to use an expressive Afrikaans word) is niksseggend.
To say one is a pragmatist without placing that pragmatism in the context of the ideology that one (inescapably) holds, is to say nothing at all. I describe myself as a “liberal,” and I regard liberalism as a perfectly pragmatic ideology.
Indeed, there is no tension between “reality” on the one hand and “ideology” per se on the other. Some ideologies are perfectly realistic, and others are not, not rendered so by mere rhetorical appeals to “pragmatism,” but by their very observable and measurable natures.
As Chris Hattingh at the Centre for Risk Analysis has often noted, practical consequences are downstream from policy, and policy is downstream from ideology. This can never be escaped.
Invocations of “pragmatism” add nothing to any conversation about policy, principle, or politics. The one who first invokes it is usually trying to find a reason not to get into substantive conversations about the morality, costs, and benefits inherent in their (even implicitly) chosen ideological framework.
A pragmatist-without-adjectives therefore cannot engage constructively in the battle of ideas, because they effectively deny the existence and importance of ideas. They refuse to name themselves or to name their enemies.
Appeals to “pragmatism” without further ado inevitably come down to either telling a lie to oneself or to others, for the person who has no underlying ideology does not exist.
The dedication to “balance” is probably more insidious than rhetorical appeals to pragmatism.
Nobody insists on “balance” when discussing rape or genocide – where “both sides” have “valid points.” This is because, at some level, everyone understands that there is, usually, a “black and white” in morality.
Those who are prepared to sacrifice some of the white to the black usually seek to hide behind an ultimately empty appeal to being “sober” and “balanced,” when instead they should be motivating the sacrifice according to the values they seek to advance. In other words, they are not being balanced, but putting forth an ideological preference that they seek to obfuscate for some reason.
A clear example of this exists when nominal liberals express themselves in favour of the minimum wage. They often argue that they are seeking to be “practical” and “balanced” in light of the economic deprivation experienced by many South Africans. Getting rid of the minimum wage entirely might work in Europe or America, they say, but in South Africa we need to be “pragmatic.”
This is, however, not them signalling some sensible, academic preference for prudence, but rather a signal that they have lost confidence in some aspect of their liberal worldview, usually by being drawn into another, more interventionist worldview, characterised by pseudo-economics.
It is therefore not that I “oppose” pragmatism, think people should not be pragmatic, or believe “practicality” or concessions are not relevant considerations. But rather that “pragmatism,” as it usually manifests itself in the discourse (as opposed to pure philosophy), cannot exist.
Embracing the reality of ideology makes for productive discourse
Theoretical conversations about the practical implementation of ideas are often great timewasters.
Free marketeers can quote studies at length showing beyond a doubt, in practice, that free market policy is better in every respect than the alternative. In turn, socialists can quote studies at length showing that beneficial outcomes that have resulted from government interference.
In the social sciences it is possible to virtually always find a credible, peer-reviewed study that will tell you that your ideas are workable, and those of your opponent are not; and your opponent will be able to do the exact same thing. Those who fancy themselves pragmatists, however, discount this, and on the strength of their preferred studies, evidence, and data, pretend that they sit above ideology.
When one embraces the reality of ideology’s existence, engaging in political analysis and debate becomes considerably more productive and even liberating.
Acknowledging the ideological nature of all (social, legal, political, economic) discourse means we can dig deep into what precisely it is our opponents believe, why they believe it, and what the real-world implications of those beliefs are.
Much-decried “labels” assist us in discovering the reality of what we are facing, and creating shorthand for those bundles of associated ideas that keep appearing together in the policy environment.
When one hears “Free Palestine!”, it is exceedingly rare (though not unheard of) for such a person to favour liberal capitalism. When one hears the nationalistic “whites must go back to Europe!” – something that is in principle not incompatible with a preference for private (black) ownership of the means of production – it is nonetheless virtually impossible to find that such people have any love lost for property rights.
It is not coincidental that these ideas float together.
To suppose that the technocrats working behind the scenes at World Economic Forum (WEF) meetings are just a bunch of smart specialists and experts trying to find solutions to complex problems is simply an incorrect assumption that obscures the reality of governance. They are united by an ideology of well-meaning, maternalistic control and can rightly be labelled “statists” or even “socialists” on a particularly bad day.
That gives us – and especially the uninitiated – a useful framework with which to analyse what the WEF advocates. This applies as much to political parties, think tanks, and governments, as it does to the WEF. Ideology exists, whether we like it or not.
Battle of ideas
The competition between worldviews and ideologies is where the real battle of ideas is to be fought.
In isolation, free marketeers debating social democrats and faux-liberals on the “practicality” of the minimum wage is a futile exercise. The free marketeer will easily show how destructive the minimum wage is, and the social democrat will easily show how beneficial the minimum wage is.
There is only one objective reality, of course, but the free marketeer and the social democrat have different value hierarchies that not only define success differently, but also measure it differently. The people who conducted these respective studies all have their own ideologies that will – must – colour their conclusions; and added to that, those of us who wish to rely on such studies have confirmation biases that influence which studies we choose to read and present.
Neutrality and objectivity are, perhaps, good principles to strive for in many contexts, but we must be very careful as to never delude ourselves into thinking they are completely achievable.
The better conversation between the free marketeer and the social democrat, then, is to discuss, compare, contrast, and then “sell” their underlying worldviews to their fellows.
Whether the minimum wage “works” or not, the real question is whether you, as a social democrat, fundamentally believe that someone should spend time in prison for not paying it, or someone should spend more time unemployed for not being offered it?
And, as a free marketeer, whether the minimum wage “works” or not, are you okay with an excellent worker only barely being able to make ends meet in an economy where other job opportunities are not available?
Both the honest free marketeer and honest social democrat would probably have to answer “yes” to these questions, meaning that real progress on the debate has been made.
It is then their job to convince Joe Everyman of the superiority of their respective perspectives.
For classical liberals and conservatives, the calculation is simple: our enemies have named us, and they do not call us “pragmatists.” They call us “colonialists,” “racists,” “bigots,” and “exploiters.” Instead of trying to rhetorically (but hollowly) place ourselves above ideology, we should instead name ourselves in full cognizance of our normative vision for the future, and never shy away from identifying and naming our enemies.
