​Liberalism: A past and no future?

It has become fashionable in recent years for mainstream economists and political scientists to write off liberalism as an approach to politics whose time is over. This blog examines this view in order to assess whether liberalism remains relevant and has a future

Background
 
Liberalism has come in many varieties since its origins in the eighteenth-century enlightenment. It has stood against a conservative politics and an approach to government based on tradition and custom. It has stood for a search for a ‘third way’ between fascism and communism. It has stood for a ‘social’ liberalism where the need for government to provide welfare services and infrastructure could be recognised alongside a market economy.
 
Cutting across these different formulations has been a unified opposition to authoritarian government where those in authority could exercise arbitrary power and monopolise the means of enforcement.
 
The new authoritarianism
 
In recent years the liberal tradition has been criticised by both eminent economists and political scientists as representing an approach to government whose time has passed. The basis for this criticism is that despite its stance against old style dictatorships, liberalism has contributed to the rise of the new authoritarianism that now threatens to undermine all democracies.
 
According to its critics, liberalism has promoted an uncompromising individualism that has fed a ‘them against us’ style of politics. Wealth in a free market has not ‘trickled down’ as promised and the costs associated with open borders in trade and people have not been recognised and compensated for. Social safety nets have been distrusted by liberals because the ‘social’ label is said to have encouraged over-extended and intrusive state powers. In advocating a ‘spontaneous’ order proclaiming the superiority of institutions that have simply evolved into their present positions of authority and eminence, liberalism has helped to entrench existing elites at the expense of ordinary people.
 
Each of these features attributed to liberalism have contributed to a situation where many people feel ignored and excluded. The perception is that the everyday needs and concerns of ordinary people have been sacrificed to the predispositions and biases of elites in politics, the law and expert agencies. Whoever considers themselves to be outside the elites in centres of power feel they have nothing to lose by confronting ‘insiders’ in Washington or Brussels. The result is the rise of a new authoritarianism speaking for all those who are like-minded in their self-perception as ‘outsiders’. They are ready to try to form majorities that can override conventional political party elites, the judiciary and insider ‘experts’. 
 
Liberalism to blame?
 
The rise of a new kind of authoritarianism in the US, Europe and elsewhere is not in doubt. What is in question is how far liberalism is to blame for its rise and, if it is not, what alternative explanation can be brought forward. 
 
The defence of liberalism turns on how its main dimensions are defined. Its central elements make it possible to distinguish between the core of liberalism and the particular distorted version associated with trickle-down economics and the spontaneous order usually referred to as ‘neo-liberalism’. The core tradition has four main dimensions. Neo-liberalism reflects only one of them.
 
1. Cognition
 
The main liberal tradition has always been in favour of systems of government and policy making based on reason. In its early days this meant building from ideas about individual rationality to a social and political whole that also reflected reason. The tradition came to be associated with the need for institutions and policy making to replicate an evidence-based method of observation and testing, as well as to recognise that policy judgements were inevitably subject to failure and would need to be corrected. In the mid nineteenth century the liberal political philosopher JS Mill was the first to recognise the importance of taking the bias and predispositions of individual judgements into account. He also saw the importance of mobilising epistemic knowledge outside the machinery of central government. 
 
Neo liberalism respected this tradition by pointing out how much knowledge lay dispersed among individuals outside government. However, it failed to recognise the need to correct for the shortcomings in individual judgement and the need for independent agencies to mobilise knowledge.
 
2. Rules
 
The main liberal tradition has always recognised the importance of what is termed ‘rule-based’ government where different institutional roles are distinguished and defined. In this way what were originally referred to as ‘factions’, or ‘sinister interests’ or associations of the wealthy could not turn the legislative or executive power of governments to their own advantage, including the power to manipulate rules in the marketplace. Rule based government requires design. 
 
At the same time the liberal tradition calls for active citizenship to support the designed order and for individual moral integrity in pointing out where government policies and practices diverge from the principles of justice. 
 
Neo-liberalism denied the role of design. It favoured evolution as a means to embody rationality in institutions. It thus ran counter to the mainstream liberal suspicion of tradition and custom which held that venerating tradition was likely to disguise who was really benefitting from government.
 
3. Enabling values
 
The mainstream liberal tradition has since the time of David Hume and Adam Smith emphasised the importance of values such as moderation and accommodation. They can be seen as ‘enabling’ values, or democratic norms of behaviour that make it possible for democracies to work. So-called ‘losers’ consent’ where those defeated in an election respect the results is one of the better-known examples of this kind of behaviour. 
 
Neo-liberalism pays no attention to such norms. Individuals aim to achieve what they consider to be best for themselves and produce a ‘spontaneous’ order.
 
4. Fairness
 
A final dimension of mainstream liberalism is to respect the need for fairness. This means fair procedures in politics and the law where everybody has to be treated as equal at the ballot box and in front of the law. It means fair treatment in respect of identity where different identities need to be given space for expression. Originally this was reflected by defining space as geography and in liberal support for federal structures. Now, when different identities co-mingle in shared urban, workplace and corporate settings not defined by geography it involves space defined by corporate, institutional and political procedures that allow for and embrace difference. Fairness also means fair treatment in terms of income and wealth. The main tradition has always been concerned that the wealthy could overturn representative government. Institutions need to face the test of who benefits from the system of authority - billionaires or the greatest number. 
 
Neo-liberalism treated the need for fairness with suspicion. For them, ‘social’ policies are a disguise for counter-productive government interventions in the market and the spontaneous order.
 
It is clear that neoliberalism misrepresents the mainstream liberal tradition. It disregards the need for design in the political and economic order, the need for social norms such as accommodation, the need to create institutionally supported space for different identities, to measure who is benefitting from power and to address inequalities. Mainstream liberalism cannot be blamed for today’s swing to the right. 
 
However, two questions remain. The first is where to attribute the impulse behind the rise of authoritarianism. The second is what mainstream liberalism has to offer to resist this rise.
 
What else to blame?   
 
Authoritarianism has two faces. There is the old – it is exemplified by leaders and parties that suppress any opposition and monopolise the means of enforcement. Putin and Xi are the faces. There is also a new authoritarianism. It is exemplified by Trump in the US. It uses the power of majorities to suppress political dissent, to intimidate the law and to override epistemic bodies. 
 
The new authoritarianism owes its rise to the advent of the information society. The information age changes the relationship between the market and politics, changes traditional distinctions between the institutions of politics and the market, and changes the way the roles of each are traditionally divided between the provision of private goods in the market and public goods through politics. 
 
In addition, the arrival of a super-abundance of information through the internet and social media changes the way preferences are formed in politics and the way people group together to get their hands on political authority. 
 
The costs of obtaining information are those of time and attention. People economise on these costs by aligning with those who are like-minded. They signal their preferences in so-called ‘echo-chambers’ or ‘filter bubbles’. Forget about checking the reliability of sources and views or debating with those who may not agree with you. 
 
In order to get their hands on political power ‘inclusive’ clubs of the like-minded are formed that overlook any of their internal differences. They are prepared to take risks alongside all those others who feel on the outside in order to gain power. Thus, Trump’s majority includes both the super-wealthy and lower income groups. They are united by a negative view of the world beyond their own like-minded group. They reprise fascist distinctions by dividing the world into friends and enemies. They are prepared to use their majority to override alternative sources of authority in the judiciary and epistemic agencies. Their leading instruments of control are to manipulate the social media and to weaponize the law. 
 
What remains relevant
 
Liberals have always been opposed to the exercise of arbitrary authority characteristic of traditional authoritarian government. The mainstream liberal tradition also remains relevant in opposing the new authoritarianism. Its insistence on measuring government by the yardstick of ‘who benefits’ provides a way of seeing whether the interest of the greatest number is being served or whether it is being used in the interest of Trump and his cronies. Liberalism’s insistence on protecting the different sources and forms of authority that enter into policy making including the judicial and the epistemic is a defence against the manipulation of information. Its insistence on activist citizenship and the importance of individual integrity provide a rallying call to stand firm on the principles of justice and against the weaponization of the law. At the same time, liberalism has to combat the direct policy appeal of the new authoritarianism. This means a focus on redressing income and wealth inequalities and on using anti-monopoly powers against those few who control the new media and internet search channels. 
 
Democracy is under threat. The mainstream liberal tradition cannot be blamed. It still stands as a bulwark against authoritarian government.