Moderates Aren't More Pragmatic, They Just Believe Different Things

it's a mistake to conflate moderation with rationality

Political moderates often like to describe themselves as ‘pragmatic’. They’re capable of making sensible compromises and doing what they must to ensure that they succeed. They frame those on the extreme ends of politics, the radicals and reactionaries, as excessively idealistic and ideological. But the truth is that no side of politics has a unique claim to pragmatism or foolish idealism.

In what follows, I’m going to take ‘pragmatism’ to mean something like instrumental rationality: using the most efficient means to achieve your desired ends. The claim that moderates are uniquely pragmatic, or at least more pragmatic, obviously hinges on whether they use more efficient means to achieve the same ends as extremists.¹

Not all moderates claim to be uniquely pragmatic and those that do sometimes disagree about what makes them pragmatic. I think we can divide moderates into three ideal types: sincere moderates, self-effacing extremists and incrementalists.

Sincere Moderates

The sincere moderate has no unique claim to pragmatism. They have moderate politics because they believe that the status quo is relatively good. They do not want society to change drastically and think that those on the political extremes would make things worse if they implemented their policy agenda. I suspect most moderates are closest to this ideal type.

Self-Effacing Extremists

Self-effacing extremists are those who claim to sympathise with a more extreme agenda but believe that trying to achieve it would be counter-productive and pursuing a moderate agenda would lead to better outcomes. In philosophy, we call a view ‘self-effacing’ if it advises against its own acceptance. I think someone like David Shor is a good example of a self-effacing extremist. He self-identifies as a socialist but his entire schtick is that he thinks the US Democratic Party needs to moderate on key issues to win over swing voters. He does not think that pursuing a more extreme (socialist) policy agenda, at least in the medium term, is a good idea. That might sound odd, but it’s understandable since he believes that pursuing a more left-wing agenda would result in the Republican Party winning and that such an outcome would be catastrophically bad.

Are self-effacing extremists uniquely pragmatic? No, because self-effacing extremists are not extremists. People can reasonably object to self-effacing extremists in two ways:

1. They disagree that their preferred extreme agenda is doomed to fail, or

2. They disagree that their preferred extreme agenda failing will lead to a catastrophic outcome (e.g. they would prefer to pursue this agenda and lose than pursue a moderate agenda and win)

The first response involves a disagreement about the likelihood of an extreme agenda’s success, which can be reasonable or unreasonable depending on the available facts. The second response can involve a factual disagreement about what the outcome would look like. But someone could also agree with the self-effacing extremist about what the outcome would look like and still disagree about whether it’s worth avoiding via moderation. A non-self-effacing extremist is no less pragmatic provided they reasonably disagree with moderates on matters of fact or value.

Incrementalists

The third ideal type of moderate, the incrementalist, is someone who believes that moderate means are the best way to pursue extreme ends. This makes them more authentically extreme than the self-effacing extremists. The incrementalist thinks that supporting a moderate agenda in the here and now is the best way to achieve an extreme agenda in the long term.

The incrementalist’s theory of change would involve something like a major centre-left/centre-right party winning elections with a moderate platform only to pursue a more extreme agenda down the road. The thought is that the only way to achieve a more extreme agenda is by winning successive elections and slowly shifting the Overton window.

This type of moderate has the most plausible claim to pragmatism, since they really do seem to be trying to pursue the same ends as the extremists. If they’re right, then they must be more pragmatic than extremists. But they might be wrong, so it’s not really clear unless we have a good way of evaluating different theories of change.

Although the incrementalist and the extremist might appear to have the same ends in mind, they might not. The extremist might want to satisfy their desire to speak their mind, or be politically earnest, or not compromise some other value and so on. Whether these ends are morally permissible or reasonable is a matter of debate, but if someone has them then they cannot pursue those ends with the same means as the incrementalist.

Intelligent and Moralistic Personality Types

In my experience, moderates who emphasise their pragmatism tend to be those that view themselves as dispassionate rational thinkers. They are not encumbered by moralistic and emotional qualms, so they can do what it takes to use the most efficient means to pursue their desired ends.

There are, of course, moderates who view themselves very differently. Some moderates don’t see themselves as ‘smart’ moderates. Instead, they see themselves as consequentialist do-gooders who don’t let their personal preferences get in the way of harm minimisation. They’re ‘moral’ moderates. They think that extremists are immoral rather than irrational.

Whether you agree with them or not, I think they have a clearer understanding of the difference between moderates and extremists than the ‘smart’ moderates do. The ‘smart’ moderates like to claim that extremists aren’t being pragmatic when they eschew a moderate agenda for an extreme one, while the ‘moral’ moderates accuse the extremists of valuing the wrong things and making unethical trade-offs. The ‘moral’ moderates end up making the more plausible argument, e.g. that the left/right overvalues expressive concerns over actual material outcomes.

In the end, I don’t think there’s a compelling case for the view that moderates are more pragmatic than extremists. Moderates and extremists simply disagree about the facts or, more commonly, they actually have different ends in mind.

1. I’m using ‘extremist’ in the political science sense, not as a pejorative