How did liberalism, the great political tradition
that from the New Deal to the 1960s seemed to dominate American politics, fall
from favor so far and so fast? In this history of liberalism since the 1930s, a
distinguished historian offers an eloquent account of postwar liberalism, where
it came from, where it has gone, and why. The book supplies a crucial chapter
in the history of twentieth-century American politics as well as a valuable and
clear perspective on the state of our nation's politics today.
Liberalism and Its Discontents moves from a
penetrating interpretation of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal to an
analysis of the profound and frequently corrosive economic, social, and
cultural changes that have undermined the liberal tradition. The book moves
beyond an examination of the internal weaknesses of liberalism and the broad
social and economic forces it faced to consider the role of alternative
political traditions in liberalism's downfall. What emerges is a picture of a dominant
political tradition far less uniform and stable--and far more complex and
contested--than has been argued. The author offers as well a masterly
assessment of how some of the leading historians of the postwar era explained
(or failed to explain) liberalism and other political ideologies in the last
half-century. He also makes clear how historical interpretation was itself a
reflection of liberal assumptions that began to collapse more quickly and
completely than almost any scholar could have imagined a generation ago. As
both political history and a critique of that history, Liberalism and Its
Discontents, based on extraordinary essays written over the last decade, leads
to a new understanding of the shaping of modern America.
In this slim, elegant book, the author of The End of
History outlines with crystalline precision why the liberal spirit, for all its
qualities, cannot grow complacent
Francis Fukuyama has ‘had to eat rather a lot of
humble pie’
Andrew
Anthony
Tue 8 Mar
2022 07.00 GMT
Iread this
book, which is a thoughtful critique but ultimately a stalwart defence of
liberalism, as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, and it felt urgent and
timely. Vladimir Putin, as Francis Fukuyama reminds us, has declared liberal
democracy “obsolete”. His is not an uncommon opinion, even in liberal
democracies. Thirty years ago, following the inglorious collapse of the Soviet Union
and the Warsaw Pact, Fukuyama gained international recognition for his book
entitled The End of History and the Last Man. It argued that liberal democracy
was essentially “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution”.
As events
such as 9/11, the Afghan and Iraq wars and the 2008 financial crisis took their
toll on liberalism’s self-confidence, Fukuyama’s work was denounced as the
height of Hegelian hubris. He was seen as a naive believer in the inevitability
of a western-defined idea of progress, and as someone who was blind to liberal
democracy’s failings.
In some
respects, the criticisms were unfair, or at least aimed at arguments he never
made. But there seems little doubt that Fukuyama has had to eat rather a lot of
humble pie. As he writes: “It’s clear liberalism has been in retreat in recent
years.”
In that
time, Fukuyama has backed away from the American neoconservative agenda that he
had initially supported, and has watched as authoritarian leaders such as
Putin, China’s Xi and Turkey’s Erdoğan laid claim to the world stage. He cites
sobering statistics that political rights and civil liberties have been falling
for the past 15 years around the world, having risen for the previous three and
a half decades.
On top of
all that, rightwing populists and leftwing progressives have made significant
inroads into western politics. Following Donald Trump’s attack on democracy,
and Britain’s rejection of European-style liberalism, the US and UK still
adhere to liberal democracy, but it’s not exactly a political and economic
system in which its beneficiaries feel much pride.
At times
the former adviser to the Reagan administration can sound like a Scandinavian
social democrat. Almost
The first
difficulty when it comes to rousing the liberal spirit is that liberalism is
famously difficult to define. It has become one of those words that mean
different things to different political groupings. A vital strength of this
slim, elegant book is that it is crystalline in its definitions, even while
acknowledging the complexities of practice. Although liberalism is under attack
from both left and right, it is from the left that the more serious
intellectual challenge comes. Fukuyama recognises this fact and attempts to
address the left’s criticism. Essentially a system that is founded on the
principle of equality of individual rights, law and freedom has evolved rather
conspicuous inequalities in each of those realms.
The most
glaring are the economic inequalities that have grown in the west, particularly
in the US and UK, over the past 40 years. Fukuyama attributes these to
“neoliberalism”, the belief in unfettered markets as the means of delivering
the goal of consumer welfare. But, Fukuyama contends, this is a distortion of
liberalism, which has a much larger social remit than simply economic
efficiency. It’s not just a question of regulating and limiting big business –
although Fukuyama argues for both – but of appreciating the social capital that
attains from redistribution and narrowing of inequalities. At times the former
adviser to the Reagan administration can sound like a Scandinavian social
democrat. Almost.
Nonetheless
the postmodern left maintain that inequalities and injustice are not a
malfunction of liberalism but instead a manifestation of structural power built
in at a foundational level. His exegesis of critical theory from Marcuse
through to Foucault, and how it has been widely adopted as a tool of
sociopolitical analysis, is a brilliantly acute summary of the way some aspects
of liberal thought have consumed themselves. The pursuit of individual autonomy
or “self-actualisation”, for example, has become mired in an identity politics
that subsumes the individual into rigidly defined groupings based on ethnicity,
gender or sexuality. In a way, argues Fukuyama, this is a necessary step to
address structural inequalities and counteract the misplaced notion that the
individual is the only unit of social importance.
Taken to
its extreme, however, this kind of analysis offers no liberation, but the
revelation of ever deeper layers of oppression, in which individual thought is
an illusion, and all intellectual interaction is subject to the power dynamics
of group hierarchies. Everything, by way of this understanding, including
empirical science, becomes a social construct designed to benefit the powerful.
As Fukuyama
notes, it’s a form of conspiratorial thinking that has been duly adopted by the
right, who saw measures enacted during the pandemic – mask wearing, vaccination
and social-distancing – as signs of a hidden power elite. Although he outlines
some familiar complaints about social media monopolies and their baleful effect
on political discourse, the overall sense you gain from this book is that
liberalism is in crisis because of the complacency that set in with its
successes. Liberal democracy has delivered on many fronts, but with each step
forward it left many constituencies behind.
Its
opponents like to speak of the “Tina” – there is no alternative – way of
thinking as a liberal democratic shibboleth that must be exposed. And so it
must. There are alternatives – as the likes of Putin, Xi and their imitators
conspicuously demonstrate. They’re just not good ones. However, liberalism
cannot afford to rely on the flaws of its antagonists. It needs to refresh,
re-evaluate and rethink. This book does not supply all, or enough, of the
answers. But it’s a good place to start with asking the essential questions.
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