Patrick Deneen: Why liberalism failed

Here's a positive way to end 2017. Patrick Deneen, an Associate Professor of Politics at Notre Dame, has written a book called Why Liberalism Failed. I have ordered it and will review it once it arrives. But from the publicity it is clear that Deneen has a political philosophy that is similar in parts to that of James Kalb and myself, as I hope you'll recognise from the excerpts of an online interview below. It's heartening to see this happening within academia, where it will hopefully have some influence.

Patrick Deneen

The first thing that Deneen usefully recognises is that Western politics is dominated by two variants of the same liberal philosophy. He calls them classical and progressive:

Camosy: When you say that “liberalism has failed,” you don’t mean that liberalism-as opposed to conservatism-has failed. Can you say more about what you mean by liberalism?

Deneen: By “liberalism,” I mean the political philosophy and the resulting political institutions, practices and beliefs that dominate the governments and societies of much of the western world. Its founding fathers were philosophers like John Locke, and in the United States, the architects of our Constitutional order. But I also include in their number those considered to be “progressives,” such as John Stuart Mill, or in the United States, John Dewey.

Most of our political debates pit “classical” against “progressive” liberal visions, holding the two views as diametric opposites and thus circumscribing the whole of our political imagination.

He also believes that liberalism has gradually unfolded over time, but that its very success has led to its failure:

What I seek to describe is a gradual but accelerating “realization” of a set of philosophical beliefs that have transformed practices, making us more fully liberal over time, and as a result, giving rise to a slow realization that its success leads to its own set of systemic failures. My thesis is that liberalism has failed precisely at the moment that it has succeeded

Deneen recognises that liberalism is not just a neutral position but an ideology based on a view of man as being an atomised, autonomous individual:

Camosy: Why do you think so many liberals fail to understand that liberalism, rather than a neutral political and ideological space, is a particular ideology and worldview?

Deneen: Liberalism has shrouded its substantive commitments behind a veil of neutrality, although some of its classical and contemporary philosophers and defenders are forthright about those substantive commitments...

...liberalism advances by positing the belief that humans exist in a state of nature as autonomous, disconnected, wholly free and rights-bearing creatures.

But what is claimed to be merely a description of human nature over time becomes an aim and goal of liberal society itself, gradually but ineluctably shaping people in the image of what it merely claims to describe. Thus, we increasingly see a liberal people defined by absence of interpersonal commitments, whether marriage, family, children, or memberships in longstanding cultures or a religious community.

Further, where commitments are taken on, they are subject to perpetual revision - whether through divorce in the matter of marriage, abortion in regard to children, or church shopping or the rise of “Nones” in the case of religion. Such people are driven above all by demands of consumption and money-making, claiming the right to self-definition while abandoning any longstanding cultural practices of self-limitation, which become increasingly regarded as unjust and unjustified limitations upon one’s freedom and autonomy.

More ironically still, a massive growth of the state is required to make this experience of individualism possible, thus enthralling purportedly free subjects to a pervasive political order.

He believes that Roman Catholic culture in the West is no longer clearly an alternative to liberalism, but tends to divide along classical vs progressive liberal lines:

Camosy: How have Roman Catholics-and even Roman Catholic moral and political theology-accepted certain aspects of liberal ideology? What might this mean for the Church as liberalism fails?

Deneen: Tragically, at least in America but perhaps more pervasively in the West, Catholicism has come increasingly to be defined by and experienced as the two political iterations of liberalism, whether “classical” or “progressive.” Rather than offering a distinct alternative, many Catholics have come to understand their faith through the lens of these dominant expressions of liberal philosophy.

...Catholicism rejects both anthropological individualism and collectivist statism, but today we are divided into Catholic tribes who by default advance one or the other as a central political project.

Deneen holds that liberalism has destroyed genuine cultures, which then have to be replaced more formally by state organisation, which then means that politics becomes a matter of contesting for the levers of the state. He wants in the longer term to return to more traditional, non-statist ways of life:

I argue in my book that liberalism advances an “anti-culture”: whether through blandishments of the market or the power of the state, it seeks to weaken and eviscerate culture and replace it with a homogenous anti-culture of “free” people who consume pre-packaged, monetized “popular culture,” but no longer live in actual cultures of memory and tradition.

Inasmuch as we see deep instability and forms of systemic failure in our politics, this dysfunction occurs not in spite of an otherwise healthy culture, but to a great extent because of the destruction of culture and its replacement with an anti-culture. As cultural norms, practices and forms of belonging are eviscerated, informal codes must be replaced by legal systems and state enforcement of legalized directives.

From what I've read so far, it is possible that Deneen will not go beyond the concept of "cultural communities," but I'll have more to say on this once I've read his book.

Regardless of this, I am hopeful that the book will have a very positive effect in breaking down the liberal hegemony within academia. It's so timely as well - there is an audience out there now for intelligent and principled criticisms of the liberal ideology.

Just how free are Swedish free schools?

Last year I scoffed at the idea that state schools in Sweden were free from indoctrination:

Björn, the ABBA pop star, wants to ban independent religious schools in Sweden. Why? He gives this explanation:

Above all, children should be kept away from anything that bears even the slightest whiff of indoctrination. In fact, freedom from indoctrination ought to be a basic human right for all children.

I burst out laughing when I read this. There is no place in the world where people are more indoctrinated than in Sweden. And they are not indoctrinated by churches but by the secular state.

I think I was right in this assessment. It seems that even the "free" and "independent" schools in Sweden are heavily subject to the state ideology. Consider the case of the "free school" located in Hörby in the south of Sweden. It was visited recently by the school inspectorate. The result?

The chemistry books used by the school were declared anachronistic, not because there was anything wrong with the chemistry being taught in the books, but because the books weren't adequately multicultural or feminist. It seems that the names in the chemistry books were "almost exclusively Western" and therefore offensive to the state ideology. The inspectorate also criticised the school for its lack of dialogue on gender and ethnicity.

The principal of the school, Kerstin Lindberg, hastened to reassure the officials responsible for monitoring any deviation from the state ideology that the lapse would be rectified:

The literature will be evaluated and new books will be purchased. [The school] will also initiate a clear equality plan for staff and invite a lecturer in gender and ethnicity issues.

The school has been given until March 3 to re-educate itself.

Really, what is the point of having an "independent" school that is so obviously under the thumb of the state? You may as well get your indoctrination straight from the source, from a state school.

As for Björn, those costumes he wore back in the 70s must have cut off some of the circulation to his brain. He claims that "children should be kept away from anything that bears even the slightest whiff of indoctrination" but remains oblivious to the fact that the great indoctrinator in Sweden is not some little religious school, it's the liberal state.

A more critical take than expected

How is liberalism presented in a work like The Oxford Companion to Philosophy? In a more critical way than I had expected. Here are some excerpts:

Liberalism. One of the major political ideologies of the modern world...Liberalism first emerged as an important movement in Europe in the sixteenth century. Today...it is the dominant ideology in many parts of the world.

Excellent. It is recognised here very clearly that liberalism is not only a political ideology, but that it dominates in many countries. It is effectively the state ideology in countries like Australia.

What we then get are two different explanations for the rise of liberalism, one favourable and one critical. The favourable one is that liberalism arose as a way of settling the religious conflicts of the Reformation:

both Protestants and Catholics accepted that the state could not impose a common faith ... Liberalism has simply extended this principle from the sphere of religion to other areas of social life where citizens have conflicting beliefs about the meaning of life. A liberal state does not seek to resolve these conflicts, but rather provides a 'neutral' framework within which citizens can pursue their diverse conceptions of the good life.

I've heard some liberals advance this kind of belief about liberal neutrality. It's not a view that's easily made coherent. First, it's not possible for a state to be neutral when it comes to conceptions of the good life. Second, the demand for neutrality undermines some key conceptions of the good life and privileges others (i.e. it pushes society in particular directions). Third, the reality is that the liberal state has imposed a set of liberal values on society, transforming society in radical ways, rather than remaining neutral.

The Oxford Companion also provides a more critical explanation for the rise of liberalism:

Liberalism's critics, however, argue that liberalism emerged as the ideological justification for the rise of capitalism, and that its image of the autonomous individual is simply a glorification of the pursuit of self-interest in the market. Liberalism replaced the web of mutual obligations which bound people together in ethnic, religious, or other communities with a society predicated on competition and 'atomistic' individualism.

It might well be true that the rising commercial classes found liberal ideas attractive because they tended to dissolve the older precapitalist order of society. But the connection to capitalism doesn't seem sufficient to me to explain why liberalism came to dominate.

The next criticism of liberalism is this:

A major challenge for liberal philosophers has been to explain why individual freedom should have priority over competing values such as community or perfectionism.

The phraseology here takes liberalism on its own terms. What liberal philosophers argue for is a particular understanding of freedom, one based on individual autonomy. So what needs to be asked is why liberals believe that individual autonomy should have priority over competing values such as community.

According to the entry, liberals give two main defences for prioritising individual "freedom". Kantian liberals believe that we are defined as humans by our autonomy and therefore to restrict autonomy is to treat people as being less than fully human:

Kantian liberals, for example, argue that the capacity for rational autonomy is the highest capacity humans possess, and so is worthy of inherent respect. To restrict someone's freedom of choice, on this Kantian view, is to treat them as less than a fully mature and responsible human being, and this is wrong, regardless of the desirable or undesirable social consequences that might follow.

As I've pointed out at this site many times, the undesirable social consequences of making autonomy the overriding good are many and severe. So severe that it would make a lot more sense instead to balance autonomy with a range of other goods. The Kantian approach is not without its critics:

This Kantian view has been very influential in the liberal tradition. However, it rests on a controversial claim about the nature of moral value and moral respect...many critics argue that using the state to promote the Kantian ideal of rational autonomy is as 'sectarian' as using the state to promote Protestantism.

Indeed. The modern liberal state, as noted above, is radically and intrusively ideological.

Critics of the Kantian approach argue that liberals should therefore avoid appealing to the value of autonomy, and instead defend liberalism simply as the only viable basis for peaceful coexistence in culturally and religiously plural societies.

Kantian liberals respond, however, that without appealing to the value of individual autonomy, there is no reason why coexistence between groups should take the form of guaranteeing the rights of individuals. Why not just allow each group in society to organise itself as it sees fit...

The Kantians have a point. If the underlying value of a society is "peaceful existence" then why would you adopt liberalism in the first place? Australia was a relatively unified society one hundred years ago. There weren't great schisms in society. If you had wanted a peaceful society, then it would have been best to let Australia develop along non-liberal lines.

Peacefulness doesn't catch the underlying dynamic of liberalism. After all, it's not as if liberals argue that society has unfortunately become so diverse and multicultural that peaceful existence is threatened and liberalism is required as a remedy. The liberal argument is very different. Liberals tend to argue that a traditionally unified society is boring or illegitimate and that such a society should be transformed by a deliberate policy of diversity or multiculturalism and that this more diverse society will add vibrancy etc.

There's one more criticism of liberalism that I'll finish on:

critics argue that the unfettered exercise of individual choice will undermine the forms of family and community life which help develop people's capacity for choice and provide people with meaningful options. On this view, liberalism is self-defeating - liberals privilege individual rights, even when this undermines the social conditions which make individual freedoms valuable.

In particular, what happens if making individual autonomy paramount dissolves communal institutions and identities? Is the freedom to be an atomised consumer as valuable as the freedom to live as a man, or as an Englishman, or as a husband and father?

In other words, there is likely to be a more significant freedom for the individual if autonomy is balanced with a range of other important goods, including those relating to family life and communal identity.

The Oxford Companion does make one last criticism of liberalism. It's a very good but lengthy one, so I'll leave it to a future post.

A bubble on the stream

There aren't too many political magazines you can buy on the newsstands here in Australia. One of them is called The Monthly. It's a mostly left-of-centre magazine that tends to run long articles by established writers. I've rarely found the articles interesting enough to respond to.

It seems that I'm not the only one to find the magazine uninspiring. Guy Rundle is an independent-minded Australian leftist. He's an editor of Arena magazine and he writes occasionally for the Guardian. Rundle wrote a critique of The Monthly last year. Having listed the feature articles of one edition of the magazine, he commented:

I’m sure that all these will be well-written and also that none of the ideas in them will be particularly challenging.

And, as the world seems to be coming apart at the seams, there seems a marginality to the concerns, a degree of preciousness in the approach...

That’s the core of the magazine, and there’s something missing, i.e. a core. From global economics, to what appears to be the meltdown of West Asia, from a critical account of Ruddism ... to the changing nature of identity … The Monthly seems to be missing a great deal of it. In the early period of Warhaft’s editorship there were essays by Anne Manne, which constituted the closest the publication came to mixing some Big Ideas into among the reportage ... Apart from the PM’s contributions of course...

All well and good, but aren’t there any other bloody ideas around, except those that flow from the PM?...

When the world is in face-masks, General Motors is asking to be nationalised, the Taliban is marching on Islamabad, the Chinese are calling for a new global currency, more live organ transplants are the result of cash transaction than donation, and the newspaper appears on the verge of winking out of existence, etc etc the failure to take on Big Ideas becomes unignorable, a gaping hole. To not recognise that the left-liberal ideology, really a late Whitlamism, of a well-connected elite is simply a bubble on the stream, is to miss a great historical opportunity...

That relative absence of ideas applies, I hasten to add, not only to the absence of writers further left than a leftish-centre, though their absence is striking — no Jeff Sparrow, Katherine Wilson, Mark Bahnisch, John Quiggin, Geoff Boucher, Larissa Behrendt, Humphrey McQueen, Terry Janke, Mark Davis (the Gangland one), Julie Stephens, David McKnight, Anita Heiss and that’s right off the top of me head — but no interesting classical/neo-liberals either — Jason Soon, Andrew Norton, Charles Richardson, Rafe Champion — or genuine conservatives like Mark Richardson, John Carroll, Pierre Ryckmans. No longer critical pieces from the likes of Christos Tsiolkas, Owen Richardson, David Bennett, Eve Vincent, Bob Ellis, Germaine Greer, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Mischa Merz, Gig Ryan … and on and on. Even leaving out people whose writing is too academic or activist you can field a pretty impressive team.

I would dare to suggest that a contents at least partly drawn from the above would render a publication with more punch than the current line up. Doubtless some of these people have been asked and declined (and some have got the occasional guernsey), but I know that most would jump at the dollar-a-word fee. Some are overexposed and you’d use them sparingly — certainly more sparingly than the limited roll-call of the existing Monthly contributors — but so many of the existing writers are, compared to the above lot, so goddam tepid.

I thought this interesting. First, Rundle gets the political spectrum right. He lists a series of writers on the left, and then some writers he calls classical or neo-liberals (i.e. right liberals) and then a few writers he terms genuine conservatives, namely myself, John Carroll and Pierre Ryckmans. (John Carroll is the author of the excellent work Humanism: the Wreck of Western Culture.)

Interesting too that Rundle correctly describes left-liberalism as an ideology; that he sees its followers not as underdog outsiders but as part of a "well-connected elite"; and that he views left-liberal ideology not as a universal and final truth bringing us to the end of history but as a bubble on the stream.

Note too that Rundle perceives the world to be "coming apart at the seams". There seems to be a growing perception across the political spectrum that all is not well with the West and that there are signs of decline.

There are shifts occurring in politics. Yes, they are happening more slowly than many of us would like. But think back to the late 1980s, early 1990s (if you're old enough). Back then left-liberalism utterly dominated Australian politics. It stood as a monolith that few were willing to openly criticise. If you wanted to be thought of as a good person you were supposed to embrace orthodox left-liberal views.

It's not that left-liberalism has entirely lost this status. It's still the largest single current of thought in the political class. But it's not as monolithic as it once was. It's not thought of as being as natural or eternal a source of political authority as it was in the late 1980s. Even in its Scandinavian heartland, mainstream left-liberalism has lost its monopoly on politics.

We don't know what opportunities this changing political landscape will eventually bring to traditionalists. I expect that there will be, at least, waves of opportunity that we need to try to put ourselves in a position to catch and make use of.