If you’re into the political philosophy, I think you will probably enjoy this dialogue as much as I did. The interlocutors are Cornel West, Dierdre McCloskey, Francis Fukuyama, and Patrick Deneen. The topic is Liberalism (like, the idea going back to John Locke, not John F Kennedy or whomever).
I get why people are very antsy these days about illiberal trends. I am too! But I still think it’s important and healthy to question liberalism, specifically because I don’t think any one social order lasts forever, or deserves to. So we should be thinking about what comes next, after liberalism, and what parts of liberalism we might want it to sustain.
I often tell people that I’m “so far to the right politically, that I wrap back around to the left.” Some evidence of this is that I think it’s Deneen and West that are the most convincing in this discussion. Curious what you all think if you have time to read it.
As a starting point, what does this introduction mean?
In recent years, a long-standing global consensus about the value of liberalism as a political and economic order has begun to erode. Where once disagreements concerned differing interpretations of liberalism’s demands or balancing liberalism’s conflicting goals of freedom and equality, now populist movements on both the left and the right are challenging the legitimacy of liberalism itself.
I think the interlocutors wave a bit vaguely at examples where populist movements of the right are challenging the legitimacy of liberalism (e.g. Hungary), but I don’t really know what this means when it comes to the populist movements of the left that are challenging it. Do they mean…Bernie Sanders? Is he challenging the legitimacy of liberalism itself, as these people broadly define it? Does he have a movement of any consequence?
Seriously, I’m scratching my head. There isn’t any doubt that e.g. Trump is an expression of the populist right’s preference for power over the kinds of democratic norms we associate with liberalism, as is someone like Victor Orban. Where is the example from the left? Or is this just a kind of both-sides stage-setting to make everyone feel cozy and warm?
The thing you hear from people like Jordan Peterson who purport to “support classic liberalism”, is that the Left attacks liberalism by going after free speech in colleges and other spaces by suppressing voices of “classical liberals” like themselves. That the Left supports a reverse racism of promoting minorities instead of the classic liberal idea of a meritocracy-based society. That the Left supports giving money and positions of power to minorities and women over the classic liberal idea of choosing the best person for the job. Etc.
Sure, but if you begin this serious debate by taking claims from people like Jordan Peterson seriously, you’ve ended the serious debate. In what country has a left anti-liberalism party gained power, or even threatened to? Which is the left anti-liberalism party of greatest threat to do so? Do they mean…Democrats? Labour? Who?
Who cares what he says? He’s a circus clown. And the idea that the current party in power in Canada is a threat to liberalism is, well, crazy. I can’t believe for one minute that this is the example that the author of the piece had in mind, or that anyone in the discussion would agree.
Well you could certainly point to Venezuela if you wanted an example of a populist movement of the left that threatened liberalism, but that’s not a particularly recent development.
Yeah, I think most of the extreme far left is essentially at odds with liberalism, in that they are willing to make major sacrifices to freedom in the name of supposed equality.
We see this on this very forum, fairly regularly these days, in the rejection of things like market based capitalism, which is generally a feature of liberalism.
The feature that is generally disregarded by both ends of the horseshoe, that results in far left and far right being similar, is a rejection of individual freedom in favor of submission to some collective authority. The differences tend to emerge in what each side imagines that authority would do, but both agree that some collective authority needs to protect people from themselves.
Having now read the whole discussion, it definitely suffers from a lack of cohesion. It’s just a random meandering conversation that has liberalism as the topic, but with so many side branches that there’s no real strong center. I think Scott was right in that once you define the outline of the discussion at the top so vaguely, then the resulting conversation is just going to be so all over the place that you can only grab onto a tendril here and there and agree with this random statement, that random point, but get nowhere useful with any of it.
As to examples of the Left attacking liberalism, the only examples given during the conversation were either from the past with vague mentions of Marxists or saying liberalism without cultural traditions and dignity and other such things lead to dissatisfaction, which is not really Leftist per se, as both Cornel West and Patrick Deneen were saying that.
What you do see is a rejection of the insanity of unregulated market based capitalism and the forced application into markets where that is inappropriate. Eg healthcare.
Because market based capitalism is a tool and requires many things to work well. When conditions are met it can be the best solution, but when they are not met it can be extremely exploitive. Pointing this out, and pointing out market failures, is not a rejection of market based capitalism. It’s just rejecting it’s dumber ways of being applied.
Well, they were the ones focusing on the thing that matters, people, and what they tell you. McCloskey, unsurprisingly, was lost in meaningless abstract indicators and torturous comparisons of different realities in completely different circumstances (Iraq and 1940s Germany? I can’t even) waiting for the good vibes to sort things, with Fukuyama still coming to grips with the real world (good on him, though).
The good thing about the discussion is that the discussion of liberalism fell by the wayside; not because it’s good or bad, but because it’s one of those highly abstract concepts that means whatever it’s convenient for your political view. And worse, contorted for whatever is convenient for defense of political or military action.
But, ultimately, it’s babies first critique of structural issues stuff that they’re vastly overqualified for.
I think that’s fair, but I’m not sure we can say that it’s displacing / has displaced a liberal order. Was there an established liberal order in Venezuela before Chavez?
Sure, but the idea that those groups now threaten to upset the liberal order in the same way that e.g. Trumpism or Orbanism does is kind of crazy. Which is the country where those people have gained power and begun an effort to dismantle democracy? In which country are they even in reach of power in any reasonably conceivable near future?
This is a good point, though I can’t take credit for it. You’re right, I found myself thinking that liberalism, as that conversation defines it, encompasses the entire political spectrum in the west from quite far left to the center-right. Only the far right was really excluded by it.
