On the Crisis of Liberalism (I)

Regular readers know (recall) that I believe the second wave of liberalism+ has ended and that it may not survive the present darkness. (In brief: first long wave: 1776-1914; second wave: 1945-2009. Some readers will say, good riddance, and to you I say, I hope you do better.) The present crisis is much visible in our daily politics (and headlines), shifting public norms, and the rising confidence of regimes and thinkers who, again, openly espouse hierarchical, ethnic, zero-sum, eugenic, and violent solutions to present conflicts.* While there is much urgent, practical work to be done to salvage institutions that may be at the core of a renewal, some reflection away from daily politics is also required. Perhaps, a way forward can be found if we articulate and invite reflection on unresolved short-comings of the liberal tradition today. I think this is urgent not just because we need polities that make minimal decency possible,** but also because we need (or so I assume today) liberal institutions to meet humanity's great challenges -- environmental disaster, genetic engineering, drone warfare -- ahead. 

Before I do so I mention two qualifications: first, even though there is no shortage of criticism, much of it has been calling attention to features not bugs of liberalism: that it is disruptive of tradition, that it embraces markets, that it is cosmopolitan, that it prefers muddling through and compromise over decisive action, that it requires living with uncertainty, and that it effaces any distinction between higher and lower pleasures and goods. The critics who complain about these features can show us what is found unattractive in liberalism, and surely teach us much about the costs of embracing liberalism, but they cannot point the way to a better, revived form of liberalism. 

A second is offered by two kinds of self-described friends of liberalism; some claim ignorant voters are the problems (for a series of posts see here). This is peculiar because liberalism is, in fact, the response to that very same diagnosis--liberalism learned from the failures of direct democracy and elected kingship. Representative democracy (an elected aristocracy), judicial review, separation of powers, and technocratic control over major policy areas are, in fact, the status quo not some distant ideal. Of course, it's possible that voter ignorance is fatal to liberalism, but that's just to say it will end in this crisis.

Others claim that the state needs to do a better job educating its citizens into democratic values.*** This is especially notable in Europe with rising panic over the presence of an Islamic population. That this is a panic is betrayed by the eagerness by which the state is marshaled to undermine once cherished, individual freedoms (of religion, association, asylum, etc.); the panic betrays a complete lack of confidence in the vitality of liberal ideas, that if children are left free to discover their own way in the world they will fail to find a liberal way of life attractive. Instead, conformism to a narrow way of life is promoted even coerced in the curriculum (or as a requirement on full citizenship). What's missed by such false friends is that the liberal experiment consists precisely in the ever-present-possibility that our children will reject our ways, and that in their vital conflicts over ends, they will discover new paths. 

What follows, then is the start of an attempt to display the existential challenges to liberalism that arise from within. I do not offer solutions to these challenges and so invite readers to chime in.

For profit media. Liberals value a free press and commerce. It's not obvious the combination is fruitful when the press is subsumed under a business model that consists in attracting eye balls by way of outrage and in order to outrage. Cycles of outrage undermine even minimal mutual trust (recall) and the possibility of keeping even a stuttering conversation going. Outrage displaces and distorts hope, which is the central emotion of liberalism. As Mill already noticed with admirable frankness, even despair, outrage (because founded in the sense of justice) is an important political weapon against the powerful, but manufactured and facilitated outrage can be a dangerous conformist and oppressive tool when wielded against minorities. There is no reason to assume that competition among media companies with such a profit model will produce good outcomes and every reason to expect it to cheer us into mutual hatred or civil war. (Mill himself did not share in the providential optimism often attributed to him.) I don't know of a good response given well-founded liberal suspicion of state oversight of the press. 

The free press was once sustained by a political economy which was completely upended by the internet (which changed viewing habits and undermined the subsidy of [classified] advertising to the press). But the more fundamental problem is the inability of a set of values (focused on objectivity, reporting news, exposing malfeasance, etc.) to sustain itself (such that the life-styles of the rich and famous passes for shaping public opinion).  And that's because of the following challenge.

Financialization of the economy. When this started the greatest danger of such financialization was already perceived by Hume, Smith, and Kant: it made open-ended warfare possible (because cheap) and it would distribute the costs of war away from those that benefit. In recent decades we have also seen that because of rent-seeking and the intellectual power of financial interests, the financial sector continues to socialize risk for relatively narrow private gain. This means that in many economies in good times the increase in general welfare primarily accrues to those with assets, and in bad times social services and public goods are cut (in order to pay for bail-outs). This state of affairs offends a sense of fair play and almost certainly is a contributing cause in stagnating productivity. When fair play seems naive, people embrace zero-sum frameworks. 

It's clear that existence of central banks, lenders of last resort, facilitates this state of affairs. Liberal alternatives, such as free banking or the Chicago plan (100% reserves on demand deposits), have serious drawbacks. Advocates of crypto-currencies have not yet offered a truly workable alternative that will address the problems mentioned here. 

Ideally, there would be competing interests that can systematically resist financialization. But most of the institutions and great intermediary social orders that may be once thought so capable -- military, law, health, education, research, clergy, press, etc.++-- are all embracing or have already been embraced by financialization. I think that's not just due to self-interest or capture by extrinsic interests who disrespect experts. For reasons that are worth exploring some other time, financialization often enters a social order under the guise of meritocracy (recall my reflections). This suggests that prior to financialization, hierarchy and status within such orders must have come to be felt unearned or inadequately rewarded (or both). Critics of neo-liberalism are surely right, then, that the public sphere and the great intermediary social orders have been undermined by financialization. But they have misdiagnosed the problem; these great intermediary social orders lacked the self-confidence and we may say (ahh) spiritual will-power to resist encroachment. This matters for those orders themselves, but also undermines the pluralism and moderation that is constitutive of a liberal political order. 

That's to say, and to get to a preliminary and my first conclusion -- this digression has been too long anyway -- that one of the roots of the crisis of liberalism is a spiritual or, if one dislikes such elevated language, a value crisis. So before one can articulate an institutional response or a political program, this crisis must be better diagnozed. To be continued... 

 

+Here I resist the urge to define liberalism--if you read me for the first time, feel free to explore my other writings. But I tend to think of it as embracing a  commitment to the harm principle, open borders for people and goods, the rule of law and imperfect human beings (recall), constitutional democracy, free speech, formal equality alongside equality of opportunity, etc. Obviously, the lived history of liberalism involves entanglements with imperialism, racism, chattel slavery, patriarchy, etc.

*This is not suggest there are no important differences among the enemies of liberalism. But that for another post (recall for example this piece and this one;  this one, and this one amongst others.)

**Liberal states are not always decent and sometimes very inhumane in their dealings with non-citizens.

***I have argued for an alternative approach (for example here).

++This does not exhaust the list (which would include trade-unions, recreational clubs, etc.). 

Comments

[Steve Davies]

Eric I think this is a very valuable and thoughtful piece. I agree completely with your two diagnosed problems or challenges. I do think though that it is clear what we need to do to roll back financialisation, it's just difficult given present circumstances. So a political challenge really. The problem of for-profit media has been enormously exacerbated by the way the internet and social media have developed (I don't think this was inevitable but that's where we now are). Also simply the over-production of media is a problem. Jason Lanier had one solution but I think we are too late for that. I think the long term solution is not to do away with for profit media per se but to revert to charging for it. Subscription has the be the main way to go. The problem is that doesn't pay journalists enough. I would that this kind of loss of faith in the public that you refer to has happened before. I don't know if you have read John Hall's account of this liberal 'failure of nerve' as he calls it, in the 1900s and immediate aftermath of WWI? (It's in his Liberalism if you haven't).

I would add a third problem, which is the dire social and cultural (and educational) effects of meritocracy. I think a central aspect of the current so-called populist upsurge is a reaction not so much against liberalism as against meritocracy (which is the ideology in the classic sense of our ruling groups). It has an anti-liberal content because since the 1980s our meritocratic elites in most spheres have bought into certain aspects of liberalism - but always combined with the core meritocratic belief that they are the smart people, therefore they should be in charge, and they know best.

[Eric Schliesser]

Hi Steve,
Yes, we agree on the effects of meritocracy (and perceived meritocracy); I blogged about that, too: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2015/11/against-merit-i-think.html
I agree that the loss of faith has happened before (that's the gap between 1914-45 in my pseudo-historical narrative). I have not read Hall; will order the book and do so.