Professionalism

In an earlier post here, I said that I wanted to think about the relation between professionalism and a political commitment. Having since read two essays that deal with the matter and express ideas basically similar to each other, I thought I should at least go into more detail.

John Pilger's essay 'Brainwashing the Polite, Professional and British Way', printed by the New Statesman and the Morning Star, is inspired by Jeff Schmidt's book Disciplined Minds. 'Schmidt argues,' says Pilger, 'that what makes the modern professional is not technical knowledge but "ideological discipline" ... "Taking sides" is anathema; and yet the modern professional knows never to challenge the "built-in ideology of the status quo".' Barclays Bank, the Labour Party, and the BBC ('Listen to a senior BBC person sincerely describe the nirvana of neutrality to which he or she has risen') are Pilger's cautionary examples.

The essay by J. H. Prynne, possibly titled 'On the Current Conjuncture' and published on the web by the students of Cambridge Defend Education, is firstly a response to the higher education White Paper and only deals with professionalism in passing. Still, it mentions 'the noble restlessness of spirit shut up in a cage of professionalism'; the diversion of 'intellectual freedom ("enlightenment") ... into professional careerism, hedged in by caution and hesitation and loneliness'; and, the 'professionalism that immobilises the drive to understand and to act on the consequences of understanding'.

Somewhere, I'd myself formed the idea that an aspect of professionalism was political neutrality: of course I don't mean as between different coloured rosettes, but neutrality as to our social arrangements, neutrality in the struggles over them. I must have formed it by the time I saw a newspaper photograph of Pakistani lawyers in the street, throwing stones with their suit jackets still on, after President Musharraf had suspended the constitution in 2007. The contrast with my ideas of British professional culture left a lasting impression.

This sort of neutrality would seem a bit like the liberal principle of 'neutrality as to the good', and maybe that would fit. There are other intersections: liberalism, too, separates work from a private life in the first place; in liberalism as in the professions, merit is the desired principle of distribution (meritocracy); the ethic of service that motivates many professionals, in the public and private sectors, is recognisably liberal. (Raymond Williams memorably challenges that ethic in the conclusion of Culture and Society. John Berger's book A Fortunate Man, his study of a country doctor, is another approach.)

In Britain, liberalism is the national philosophy, corresponding to the dominance of the higher-educated middle class; the same class, in Britain and worldwide, is home to the professionals. (Professionalism must be one of the most frank class virtues.) But in Pakistan liberalism is fighting for survival, and the country's professionals join that fight. Is it that professional neutrality holds while satisfactory liberal institutions are secure? Would our lawyers, say, have observed 'ideological discipline' if Tony Blair had managed to introduce ninety-day detention without trial? I don't think it's certain that they would.

If my suggestion's right then professional neutrality wouldn't be a function of brainwashing or careerism, but a principled position for liberals (and professionalism a kind of ideal). They'd insist that political expression uses the channels their forerunners opened in private life. So professionalism seems to fit neatly with a commitment to liberalism. What about—what I first had in mind—a commitment against it?