A step by step review of Why Liberalism Failed

This is the first write-up of my reading and thoughts Patrick Deneen’s book Why Liberalism Failed. I’ll be adding to this series and posting thoughts as I work through the chapters. Some of it will be a brief summary of the author’s position as best I can frame it and understand it, and some of it will be references to things that I think are related.

Also, know that I might be drinking while writing this.

How the book begins: First, its important to note, as both the Preface and some that have reviewed the book have done, that this book is not just a criticism of the Progressive Liberal political parties of western democracies. It’s also a criticism of Conservative Liberal parties parties of western democracies. It starts with the assumption that both Progressive (read Democrats in the U.S.) and Conservatives (read Republicans in the U.S.) are both variants of Classical Liberalism. Throughout the book, the author refers to the two subgroups of Liberalism as Progressives and Conservatives rather consistently. Keeping this initial definition in mind while reading really improves the book.

The underlying premise, introduced in the introduction and bit by bit elaborated in each chapter, states that Liberalism both increases the power of the State, the need for Individualism, and drives us further away from each other as local community members. Further, it drives us further away from virtue ethics, which compels us to cultivate our inner selves with restraint to better live within groups. This direction is the expected result of the Liberal philosophy.

To make the case for this framing early on, the author notes various trends that have become unbearably obvious in modern political movements: the belief that that we are out of control of our political system’s decisions, such as populist movements or movements to remove ourselves from global organizations. We also can’t fix these failures with a more refined “liberalism” since this situation is the ultimate end result of following Liberal ideology. Instead, we need something new, i.e. not Communism or Fascism which were tried as alternatives and failed.

Chapter one starts to give a more refined interpretation of the distinctions of terms with references to historical philosophical and political ideologies. First is the more traditional notion of liberty: the process of liberating yourself from your short comings. That process and philosophy has shown up across the world in Stoicism, Buddhism, Christianity, and many other moral frameworks that ask individuals to reflect on their shortcomings, misunderstandings, and excesses such that they can be a more refined being within society and nature. Paired with this is an underlying assumption that we as humans and deeply interconnected with nature.

The author slowly defines the world view defined by Classical Liberalism, or the Liberalism that now influences how most OECD countries operate, with two key revolutions that developed over the course of several hundred years:

1. Humans exist in nature as isolated autonomous individuals working towards their own self interest. All of our relationships, from personal to economic, are made with the consent that entering into the relationship will benefit ourselves. This is the core idea to the Objectivist Movement and Anarcho Capitalism, the more extreme forms of Libertarianism.
2. Humans have the capacity and right to remake our environment, such as nature and society around us, in a way that benefits us. We can and should apply nature to improve our lived environment to “liberate” us from the limitations of nature. We can and should improve ourselves to go beyond whatever natural limitations exist. In an extreme form, this this is the basic ideology of Transhumanists.

What I find great about this breakdown is that the author references well know western philosophers in this development.

The first revolution in part came from Hobbes and then later John Locke. This “voluntarist” logic is what undermines our readiness to commit to our personal development and various stages of relationships. If we deem a relation of any kind to not benefit ourselves, its our right to back out of it and search for another relationship that better improves our situation. The author is also careful to state that making decisions with our well being in mind is not in and of itself bad, but making decisions primarily on our self interest leads to the obvious situation: we’re not making decisions that deeply take into consideration the groups and communities we live in. We make decisions which may harm the people in our lives in an effort to enact radical freedom. What’s even more interesting is that the author then links this first revolution to Conservatives, branding them as a first-wave form of Liberalism.

The second revolution is tied to first Francis Bacon who “argued for the human capacity to ‘master’ or ‘control’ nature.” This then gets extended by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Richard Rorty.

A good quote that summarizes chapter 1 is

“Liberalism instead understands liberty as the condition in which one can act freely within the sphere of unconstrained positive law”

Chapter two begins the most exciting roller coaster: through Liberalism, Individualism and Statism both reinforce each other, need each other to survive, and are ultimate consequences of Liberalism that will destroy our capacity to truly liberate ourselves and work together as thoughtful members of a political society.

The break down is kinda cool. The first assertion is the recognition by Hobbes and Locke that our right to Individualism (i.e. Conservative Liberalism) is limited by the radical freedom of other individuals under Natural Law. Thus, with lots of explanation, its critical for some form of formal human law, such as a State, to ensure we are not infringing upon rights of others. Through this enactment of law and a minimal State, we can maximize our opportunity for individual liberty. This is nicely summarized with a quote:

“Thus, for liberal theory, while the individual ‘creates’ the state through the social contract, in a practical sense, the liberal state ‘creates’ the individual by providing the conditions for the expansion of liberty, increasingly defined as the capacity of humans to expand their mastery over circumstances”

Another way to read that is to say that under Natural Law, where any individual is free to do whatever they want without restriction, we’re pretty limited since we’re under constant threat of violence. But with some amount of law and state, such as a Leviathan, we can reliably act to our own self interest with less fear of violence. This is basically the underpinnings of the Non Aggression Principle that Anarcho-Capitalists love.

The next exciting radical proposal is that a Progressive Liberal framing, one that suggests that a State should do more in society to ensure individuals are capable of acting freely, increases the necessity of acting as an Individual. One case study in this is Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign focusing on the life of a lady named Julia. I never saw this, but it was mocked by more than a few people. Even with that mockery though, that’s just an extreme story of a State that provides more confidence in social order than simply trusting that your neighbor won’t be an asshole to you.

The authors concern is that eventually, with Progressive Liberal tendencies to enlarge the state to ensure individuals can act equally in society, and Conservative Liberal tendencies to demand more radical freedoms, the state will grow larger and larger and we will each be driven to ask less of ourselves in exchange for asking more from each other and the state as the final arbiter in disagreements.

If you’ve ever read any political critiques by Noam Chomsky or Nom Chompsky, you’ll find all of this pretty familiar, he’s long written about the the lack of difference in the Democratic and Republican parties attempts to infringe upon our real liberties and fail to enable a meaningful society.

In later days, I shall write more on following chapters as I dive into this deconstruction of Liberalism. Yay Deconstructionism.