Liberalism Succeeds, Then Devours Itself
I’ve noticed a trend in recent years toward phrases like “the failure of capitalism” and “the collapse of democracy” appearing in many places. I wanted to get a proper handle on it.
I dug through several books, and this one struck me as the most reasonable and rationally written, so I liked it. I’ll summarize it here as notes for my own reference.
Why Liberalism Failed
The author is Patrick J. Deneen. He is a professor in the political science department at the University of Notre Dame. He has also taught at Princeton University and Georgetown University.
The content is dense and the text will be long, so I’ll split it across several posts.
The argument
Liberalism (or liberal democracy) emerged after the medieval aristocracy and swallowed the world. In the 19th century there was a current hostile to liberalism, and various alternative systems of rule were explored (communism was one of them), but liberalism triumphed over all of them and appeared to have seized hegemony as the world’s only political system. Yet several distortions have recently begun surfacing one after another, and once again a period in which liberalism is shaking has arrived. The main points are “ever-widening inequality,” “individuals growing ever weaker while the state grows ever stronger,” and “declining morals.” And there is an extremely serious concern here: these are not outcomes brought about because liberalism failed, but rather outcomes that arise precisely because liberalism succeeded. In other words, liberalism was destined from the start to end up this way, yet the world has arrived at this point without abandoning it and without being able to establish a sufficient alternative, and if left alone, it will surely continue as is.
Here I’ll organize things with a focus on the point that “individuals grow ever weaker while the state grows ever stronger.”
The waning of liberalism
Liberalism sprouted in the Renaissance period. An idea that had existed for 500 years was realized 250 years ago with the founding of America. (It then spread to other countries afterward.) When liberal democracy rose to prominence, people believed that representatives chosen by everyone through elections would eliminate the aristocratic class, and they put that belief into practice.
The achievements of liberalism
- The elimination of arbitrary inequality
- The fall of monarchy and aristocracy
- The advance of modern technology
- The end of religious wars
- The promotion of globalization
- Solutions to sexism, racism, LGBT issues, and the like
Francis Fukuyama In 1989 he declared that the long debate over the ideal system had ended. But from the 2000s onward he began writing things that contradicted that claim.
Citizens now think the successors are far worse than the aristocratic class ever was.
Since the establishment of liberalism, it has continued to destroy countless social norms and religious customs. It is a meritocratic society in which only those who have something are grateful, but the era in which America enjoyed that freedom is fading, and 70% of Americans feel that America’s peak is over.
Statism and individualism are one and the same
It may feel strange to put it in words, but “statism” and “individualism” are the same thing. No—they are two wheels moving in the same direction. In fact, statism and individualism have grown by mutually supporting each other. Both drive liberalism forward.
What American politics calls conservatives and progressives can be reworded as “classical liberals” and “progressive liberals.” Conservatives aim to achieve individualism by believing in market principles and pursuing small government. Progressives reject that and think that by promoting state involvement, they too will ultimately achieve individualism. But both share the same base.
Hobbes’s “Leviathan” (1651) Liberated individuals expect the state to restrain social norms. In a state made up only of self-reliant individuals, individuals end up being restrained by the state.
Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” (1835) Individualism is the cause of statism. Individualism ultimately leaves a person with no one to rely on in times of trouble.
What was feared from the very establishment of liberalism is now actually happening to us.
Relying on the state
It is difficult for an individual to protect themselves alone. That’s why people form groups. The ability to skillfully control groups is said to be the reason Homo sapiens survived. But in a society thoroughly permeated by liberalism, individuals remain exposed to various threats continuously. There is no group to rely on, no trustworthy cultural norm exists, and as a result people come to think that the state, as the only thing they can rely on, should control everything through law.
In other words, as relationships with local organizations grow thin, loneliness and confusion make people want to identify instead with the state, something far more distant. Ties to family, community, religion, and culture get singled out as evils that block economic independence, and avoiding them deepens loneliness, leaving the state as the last seemingly legitimate organization to become severely dependent on. These things happen gradually.
That is the reason fascism raged in the first half of the 20th century, 150 years after liberalism spread.
Madison’s “extended orbit” He explained that setting citizens against one another and making solidarity difficult promotes particular interests. Without cohesion, people have no choice but to leave everything to the ruling class. People are made to give up on the public good and driven instead to pursue purely personal ambitions. And the state promotes and supports that. A country that grows wealthy this way then has to fear invasion from other countries. The scale of that threat cannot be predicted. So the state must be granted unlimited authority in order to respond to such an emergency.
Human beings are by nature inclined to feel affection toward what is close by. Local government should, in principle, come before central government. Yet if “excellent state management” makes it impossible for regions to be attractive (through tax systems, control of budgets), talented people naturally gather in the center, and that bias is reinforced. Weakening local government moves things further toward statism, but that is also thought to benefit individualism.
In recent years, the possibilities of technology, and in a sense its terrors, have become a perfect motif for this.
The Amish
The Amish, a Protestant sect, are known for disliking technology. Theirs is a community that values self-reliance, and within Amish communities, building a barn together is an event that strengthens the bonds of the community. They also decide whether to adopt a technology based on whether it is useful for sustaining the community. Some of their choices raise an eyebrow, like zippers or cars, but what’s interesting is insurance. They believe that the community itself is insurance, so insurance run by a business company is unnecessary. Under the conventional structure of insurance, you have no way of seeing whose situation the premium you paid is being used for—no way of seeing to whom you bear an obligation or responsibility—and that is an extremely irresponsible structure.
Liberalism’s childish misconception: “human beings are inherently good”
The people who drove early liberalism believed, almost innocently, that placing people into a philosophical “state of nature” would lead to the right outcome.
In other words, they argued that there would be no problem shifting from ancient freedom (freedom grounded in virtue) to modern freedom (the pursuit of all liberated freedoms). This is nothing but the childishness of the notion that human beings are by nature free and self-sufficient. They surely had no children and had forgotten their own childhood.
An “individual detached from all constraints” never existed in the state of nature to begin with, but it has been artificially created through the power of the liberal state. Can such people properly hold norms and act in an orderly way? Can they act in a way that contributes to humanity and the state from a long-term perspective? The results are being thrust in front of us right now.
The decline of norms around courtship and marriage, the support systems that prioritize individual independence regardless of whether one is married or unmarried, children becoming an ever-greater burden, and the resulting decline in birth rates.
The absence of norms inevitably strengthens laws, and inevitably leads to a surveillance society.
Soviet novelist Solzhenitsyn (1979) “You cannot criticize someone who has not broken the law. We have built a society with no voluntary self-restraint.”
Community as the prescribed remedy
The thinker Wendell Berry A community is built on “trust, goodwill, self-restraint, patience, empathy, tolerance.” It is a place of limits. A healthy home life is essential, and the discipline of home life prevents drift into narrow self-satisfaction. Educational institutions grounded in community can also resist the sovereignty of the state. The whole community worries together over the education of children born into it. “The public good” can only exist within a narrow community. Once it grows broader, it inevitably becomes abstract, and distortions inevitably arise in reality.
When Tocqueville visited America in 1830, he was struck by Americans’ enthusiasm for local activity. The theory of the township Self-governance is something brought about through long practice and discussion. People handling public matters themselves are indeed sometimes clumsy. But without repeating that practice, one cannot escape subjugation to a distant government. The odds that what democracy decides turns out to be the correct conclusion are actually low. But he argued that without continuing to engage in politics this way, one’s position eventually becomes no different from that of a slave. Life as citizens of the polis The discipline of resolving various issues locally through self-governance. The habit of self-restraint and self-discipline. The cultivation of political judgment.
Running a household economy That means frugality and thrift. Making things yourself, doing things yourself. A home vegetable garden is a good example. Understanding nature’s blessings and human limits. Humans joining nature’s rhythms, and celebrating that.
Moving away from abstraction and indifference Consumption grows ever more anonymous. When you run a local economy, you can clearly see who that money goes to and where it is used. You can properly perceive the structure of society.
The cultivated, acquired ability to sacrifice one’s own narrow personal interest for the sake of other people.
The realization of self-governance and mutual education.
In terms of contemporary political philosophy: Communitarianism. Republicanism. Or Burkeanism (a way of life that values old customs).
Rod Dreher The Benedict Option Resistance to counterculture The reconstruction of culture and community (large-scale farms, for instance)
Freedom is exhausting
Young people are raised with only two choices: compete, or fall into the abyss. “The winner is both the one who cheats and the one being cheated.” People cheat others in order to win, while they themselves are deceived by the con that winning is right.
Liberalism actually offers no real choice. Universities mass-produce practical education stripped of religion and human-rights issues, and graduates become high earners while growing dissatisfied with society and inequality, and universities then line up the next set of similar-sounding topics (whatever seems practical at the moment) to make it look as though they’ve reformed.
Living inside liberalism, we are merely choosing between an iPhone and a Galaxy, having half abandoned the question of whether smartphones are even useful in the first place. Which of the two is truly free?
Hobbes: “Man dies still wanting more, and only then does it finally end.”
Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2020/10/369/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.