Christie Davies’ new book explores in great depth the hideous contradiction between the ideals of the particular individual and the betrayal of individualism by the causalist state, which nevertheless conceals itself in the rhetoric of ethical individualism.

The Strange Death of Moral Britain
by Christie Davies
published by Transaction Publishers (2004)
Hdbk., 264 pgs.
ISBN: 0765802236

It is the rare sociology book that warrants the epitaphs “exciting” and “brilliant.”  Such is Christie Davies’ The Strange Death of Moral Britain, a book that deserves to be read by readers on the political right and left. The book’s argument is that between 1950 and 1960 a new form of political reasoning replaced the old ideology or “logic” of “moral Britain,” which underlay legal and social sensibility. The new outlook the author identifies as  “causalism,” and it has insidiously become the ethos of modern British society. The consequences of “causalism” as a political ideology are that the tradition of individualism, the legal principle that a just society rewards just behavior, and even national sovereignty, all concepts based upon the idea of moral hierarchy, have been radically undermined.  

Davies’ book largely consists in an analysis of the debates surrounding three controversial subjects of late 20th century British politics: capital punishment, abortion and homosexuality. While in Britain today there is little debate over these subjects, Davies audaciously asks: How was it possible for there to have been a debate in the first place? Modern wisdom assures us that to believe in capital punishment or to oppose the right to abortion is a vestige of barbarism — an atavism from the ancient world. Davies has reexamined the language of these debates and, from careful construction of the language of the losing side, has discerned the vestiges of what he calls “moral” and “respectable” Britain.

The central concept in Davies’ book is causalism.  At times he defines it in terms that imply it is an ideology of a ruling elite: “The causalists are . . . consequentialists and indeed utilitarians. . . .They are only concerned with the minimizing of pain, harm and suffering and not with the promotion of happiness or pleasure.” At others, he defines it as a political ideology: “They seem to assume we all have a common and equal capacity for suffering. They are concerned only with the short term, with the immediate effects of legislation in removing a particular group of individuals from harm or the threat of harm and not with the long term or indirect consequences from such measure.” And still in another place he implies that causalism is a sort of popular mass ideology: “Causalists place greater importance on the visible harm experienced by particular persons, than on that inflicted on mere ‘statistical’ persons.”

Causalism becomes more easily intelligible when contrasted with what it supposedly replaced, “moral Britain.” “Moral Britain,” in Davies' view, was based upon the culture of “autonomous individuals making moral choices and receiving their desserts.”  This was reflected, Davies argues, in the penal code, which employed a number of punishments exemplary of its moral founding. The death penalty, for example,  while not always justifiable in terms of social utility, was reserved for the state as a sign of its ultimate moral authority over life and death. The divorce process was necessarily complex prior to the late sixties because its purpose was to find the party morally responsible for a marriage’s dissolution. 

The advent of causalism demanded that the old moral functioning of the law be answerable to a utilitarian calculus of the law’s involvement in inflicting pain: if it could not be argued that the law’s function prevented more pain in the long term than it inflicted, then the law should be discarded. Modern arguments for the death penalty in America, for instance, are often countered by the position that they do not serve as a deterrent and even if they do, the cost of such a deterrent is prohibitive. Both positions entail causalist arguments to “refute” what was once a matter of moral principle. 

Causalism was more than just a form of legal and political reasoning. It radically redefined the individual according to its own priorities.  Moral Britain’s “virtuous or wicked individual,” an individual who might be known by the fruits of his or her actions in a shared moral code, was a thing of the past.  In its place was an abstract individual who experienced pain from the law’s application. If the pain inflicted did not result in “less pain” inflicted upon the greater public, the law’s punishment was unwarranted. The idea of justice played no part in these considerations.

This leads to another tenet of causalism. Whereas the moralists assumed that individuals are autonomous agents,  making free choices both good and bad, the causalist sees their actions as “caused by external pressures.”  (p. xiv) Hence the notion of “autonomous moral choice” rendering the actor “wicked” or “good” is absurd. To the causalist, “wicked choices” are simply a function of social injustice or some other societal abstraction. However, by denying individual responsibility, the causalist also must disregard individual autonomy. 

Davies’ first chapters trace the decline of the “cultural of respectability” and the “culture of morality” in 19th and 20th century Britain. He then uses this as a context for examining the shifting attitudes towards capital punishment, abortion and homosexuality in the period. He concludes by arguing that the decline in the moral culture of Britain is more than merely a shift in particular views of the world. With the disintegration of Britain’s moral understanding of itself comes a decline in the moral basis for Britain’s political autonomy. By substituting a causalist way of thinking about its problems, Britain’s ability as a nation state to define itself in unique and moral terms is radically undermined. The recent success of unelected European “human rights” courts in dictating their views onto British society by appealing to causalist reasoning is a symptom of Britain’s increasing subordination to foreign control.

In his first chapter, the “Decline of Respectable Britain,” Davies introduces the figure of the “U Curve,” which he argues describes the decline in crime at the end of the 19th century and accounts for its increase at the end of the 20th. Inversely, it describes the rise of moral Britain and then its subsequent decline. His empirical bases for this are indexes for violent crime and other aspects of life (moral behaviors for instance). He claims have to do with the cultural value of “respectability” (“moral behaviors”). He argues against criminologists and sociologists who have claimed that there was a rise in crime towards the end of the 20th century due to inequities brought about by “capitalism.” The culture of respectability exerted an influence on behaviors that were not directly monitored by the state. For instance, drug use and alcoholism declined during the “U-Curve” era because the culture of respectability condemned them both; subsequently the British health care system was overwhelmed with drug addicts in the sixties because there was no longer a culture of respectability which held their abuse in contempt.¹ 

The principal institution for instilling respectability was the church, and particularly, Sunday School. And while Davies argues that this didn’t mean that Britains were especially religious, what made respectability widespread was not “the minority with a strong faith but the majority with some faith.”

While the first chapter of Davies’ book covers the decline of “marked changes in the moral behavior of Britains,” the second chapter, the decline of “moralist Britain,” describes corresponding changes in the attitudes towards morality among Britain’s elite. The shift also corresponds to Davies' “U-Turn” regarding deviance. It also introduces the concept of causalism.

The modern abolition of capital punishment and legalization of homosexuality have little to do with the language of tolerance, Davies argues. He cites many polls, for instance, indicating that most Britains believe in the necessity of capital punishment — and continue to do so. The transformation of the penal code with respect to these issues reflects not the will of the British people but rather the application of causalist reasoning. Causalist reasoning quickly determined that the utility of capital punishment and stigmatizing homosexuals was hardly justifiable in terms of social utility. Unsurprisingly in both cases, the “rights” of the condemned or the homosexual individual were never invoked as a basis for the legal and penal changes involved.

The law restricting abortion in England was liberalized in 1967 for reasons that likewise had little to do with individual rights. While previously abortion had been illegal and the penalties severe, the mother was rarely prosecuted.²  It was generally assumed that the mother’s “immoral deed” was due to insanity. When performed by physicians it was assumed that there were medical circumstances in which abortion might be necessary. British judges and prosecutors were reluctant to try a doctor acting in good faith. Abortion remained an immoral act.

When the causalist mentality took hold in the late sixties, it was only a matter of time before causalist logic applied itself to the question of unsanitary abortions. While there was no mention of “woman’s right to choose,” as in the United States, abortions were legalized on causalist grounds. The rationale was that more harm was caused by preventing abortions, than by permitting their safe and controlled execution.

Finally, liberalized divorce laws also followed the same logic. Originally the divorce hearing was to establish who was at fault in bringing about the tragedy of divorce. However, the causalists immediately pointed out that the process made acrimony and bitterness on the whole greater than the problems that resulted from ignoring the question of moral culpability altogether. In the long run, they argued, more stability was brought to the family by avoiding establishing “fault” (a relic of “moral” Britain) and finding ways to mediate harm in the future.

The culmination of causalist reasoning should have been the Conservative Party’s 1995 Family Law Bill,³  which introduced no-fault divorce in its pure form. However, neither Conservative nor Labour party wished to put the law into practice.

Remarriage after divorce produced even more divorce since second marriages tended to be less stable than first ones. Fatherlessness with the serous problems this created for children became even more widespread, a state of misery that greatly dwarfed any decrease in the amount of transitional distress that made one route to divorce preferable to another. (p. 100)

The irony that causalist reasoning had refuted itself on its own terms was hardly lost to MPs: a bill to “protect the short term suffering of the family” that would effectively destroy it brought a temporary halt to causalism’s triumphs.

The final two chapters of Davies’ book deal with the overturning of the death penalty and laws prohibiting homosexuality. As late as 1956 the Archibishop of Canterbury, arguing for the death penalty, declared that there were only two moments when society upheld the sanctity of life: When it asked men to sacrifice themselves in war, and when society required of an individual to give up his own life for ruthlessly taking another. In the 19th century it is true, military execution was usually combined with some sort of public exhibition, so as to serve as a sort of deterrent. However, the purpose was not reducible to social utility. The purpose was to manifest the state’s superior moral being.  The principle of hierarchy of society was part of the ethos behind capital punishment.

When the death penalty was finally abolished on causalist grounds in 1965, what was significant, Davies argues, was that the state effectively lost the right to take the life of individuals according to due process in defense of the preservation of order and in the interest of the nation as a whole.⁴  The military, which was explicitly founded on the principle of hierarchy, continued to insist on the right to execution even though the actual need was virtually nonexistent. The “rite” of execution was a ritual of hierarchy but also one of particularity.

Davies links the taboo of homosexuality to the hierarchical state. Drawing upon anthropology, he argues that “the main reason homosexuality is so savagely punished” is because “in . . intolerant societies it was perceived as a metaphor for and a threat to the fragility of important social boundaries.” (p. 141) Davies points out that traditionally in English society, rustics seeking solitary congress with sheep have been subject to equally severe penalty. The decline in the hierarchical ideal of Moral Britain renders the privileged status of the male problematic.⁵ 

Davies’ book ends on a fatalistic note. Unlike the American model of government where individual rights are an ethical end in themselves, the British model of government presupposed that the government itself was, in some sense, the moral guardian of society. While American ethics remain entrenched in the individualistic Bill of Rights, often putting them at odds with the state, British ethics very much remain an affair of the state. Hence the emergence of causalism is particularly dangerous to Britain, as there is no tradition of legal and ethical individualism which stands apart from the British government.

The causalist mentality of the European Economic Union now may be applied by its unelected court system to force non-democratic “reform” on sovereign Britain. In 2000, for example, the European human rights Court found Britain guilty of human rights violation for preventing homosexuals from serving in the British armed forces. The army was forced to drop its restrictions and follow the dictates of the European Court.  Davies says that despite the British military’s opposition to homosexuals serving in the army, the ban would probably have been found unacceptable by British courts on causalist grounds. However, his point is that a small group of foreign attorneys, from countries whose armed services “are unable to cope with even an unexpectedly robust tour of peacekeeping let alone defend their countries”, can now determine the defense policies of supposedly democratic countries. The issue is not homosexuality, but the sovereignty of causistry.

Davies’ study is exemplary in its attempt to understand modern politics not in terms of actors or ideology, but as itself the product of a dispositif, a sort of ideal type that resembles the protestant ethic motif of Max Weber’s famous book of the same name. This enables him to explain politics and the culture which helps create it simultaneously. Thus since the late 1950s and early 1960s, causalism has determined British political thinking, without itself being a particular political ideology.

And yet causalism is not an ideology generated by civil society, either. British attitudes towards capital punishment, homosexuality and abortion remained intact long after causalism abolished the former and adopted liberal attitudes towards the latter.

Causalism in all likelihood is a sort of modern political code that has developed in mass society to accommodate the residual ethical demands of voters (“stop oppression”) and conceal the increasing distance between the elected and the electors. Unlike causalism, most western political ideologies have claimed to preserve the ethical integrity of the individual. To speak of universal social justice is to speak simultaneously of individual justice.

Causalism jettisons two key components of western thought. First, it abandons the traditional idea that the “people’s representative” should indeed represent them. Representation implies that the representative speak on behalf of those who are absent. The causalist politician speaks on behalf of those who are most visible in the media at a given moment. His function is to translate complex social and historical issues into the opposition oppressor/oppressed and to align himself with the latter. In this the causalist is not the spokesperson for a political or ethical community composed of individuals (what makes the dyad oppressed/oppressor meaningful in the first place), but serves to articulate the transient sovereignty of unelected media culture.  The current vogue of soliciting “celebrity” opinion on “political issues” is hardly surprising: the celebrity is closer to causalist politics than the politician.

Second, causalism abandons the idea that the individual should be the basis of sovereignty. The ethical individual was at one time the universal individual for whom laws of society once rested upon. To causalism, this individual is an abstraction and need not be considered when the causalist alters the rules of society to “minimize the pain” of the individuals presented by the media. Certain images, to the causalist, create such an overwhelming image of suffering that society may be assumed to concur with the pieties of the causalist — without, of course, a democratic vote. In modern society, paradoxically, the image of the oppressed is sovereign, not the individual being oppressed.

Davies’ book explores in great depth the hideous contradiction between the ideals of the particular individual and the betrayal of individualism by the causalist state, which nevertheless conceals itself in the rhetoric of ethical individualism. Unfortunately, Davies, like Weber, offers no solution, and so it is fitting to conclude with Weber (and Goethe) on a note of pessimism. For causalist society it might be said:

Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart;
this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of
civilization never before achieved.

 

The Strange Death of Moral Britain is available on Amazon.com.

Endnotes

[1] p. 36 . In fact, violence and drug addiction were implicitly encouraged as “ways of pursuing risk and sensation” in a society which had ceased to value and enforce respectability. Oddly, Davies traces the rise in smoking among the British to the rise in the culture of respectability. Despite being a drug, smoking “can be shown experimentally that nicotine enhances cognition and improves performance on a variety of tasks in marked contrast to alcohol.” Tobacco, he argues, is a drug compatible with the values and institutions of respectable Britain. Most oddly, he traces the rise in inflation in the UK in the late fifties to the increase in crime. (pp. 58-9)

[2] Nevertheless abortions did take place –in the 1930s possibly around 60,000 a year.

[3] Here the immediacy of causist reasoning was clearly rendered problematic by the long term suffering the ostensible short term gain ameliorated. Second marriages proved more unstable than the first, and the number of divorces increased rather than decreased. With second marriages came the problem of fatherlessness which has now reached epidemic proportions. Strangely, the 1995 no fault act was not enacted by the Conservative government: No party wanted to be associated with an act that essentially “Destroyed the family”.

[4] p. 125.  Intriguingly, Davies points out that in socialist societies, challenges to the state often results in the execution of the individual. In these societies, the ethical ideal is less concerned with life as an ideal than on the state itself.  The Labour party which often took the position of anti-hierarchy on social issues, was quick to embrace the “hetero-sexual AIDs” epidemic as a cause—despite it not existing. (p. 133) While the Tories eventually abandoned the old hierarchy position, they never supported the “right to bear arms, “ as was the case in the United States. Unlike the US with its tradition of individual rights, this was not the case in Britain, where the state as an ethical ideal held a privileged ethical status. Hence to possess weapons was to challenge its hierarchical status—which the Tories opposed.

[5] Curiously he claims that current efforts to “defend the family” have no relation to homosexuality as a taboo.

[6] The recent obsession with the “political opinions of actors” is hardly surprising in this light.

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