Has 'Why Liberalism Failed' Failed?

One of the most talked-about books in intellectual (or at least opinionated) circles over the past two years is Patrick J. Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed. Recognizing conservative, leftist, populist and authoritarian dissatisfaction with the liberal order, Deneen reportedly traces it all to liberalism's ultimate inability to check self-indulgent, self-interested individualism on the social, cultural and economic fronts. I haven't read the book, but Robert Kuttner's review of the new paperback edition in The New York Review of Books tempts me to give the book a chance -- since Kuttner certainly doesn't. An editor and co-founder of The American Prospect magazine, Kuttner qualifies as a leading liberal thinker in the Democratic sense of the term. He's dismayed, if not disgusted by all the attention Deneen has received. In Kuttner's view, Why Liberalism Failed is at heart a brief for Catholic traditionalism that misrepresents both liberalism and the history from which it emerged. I can't judge whether he's fairly characterized the book until I read Deneen myself, but one fundamental distinction Kuttner draws is instructive. He quotes Deneen's definition of liberalism as an aspiration toward "the greatest possible freedom from external constraints" in order to damn it as a caricature. For Kuttner, liberalism's target isn't "external constraints" but plain and simple tyranny of all kinds, from aristocracy to theocracy, from bureaucratic statism to the tyranny of the majority.  Rather than failing or refusing to curb excessive individualism, Kuttner contends, liberalism is ever mindful of the limits imposed on individualism and collective power alike by the rights of others -- both other individuals and minority groups. Deneen, Kuttner claims, idealizes a pre-modern consensus in which few actually had any say and which often was enforced by cruel violence.

What Deneen actually says remains to be seen, but Kuttner's outraged review arguably plays into the author's hands. Deneen might well ask: what keeps a liberal from seeing any external constraint as tyranny? The answer must depend on how one defines "external constraint." From Kuttner's account, Deneen includes traditional values, including revealed religion, in the definition, but Kuttner himself, waxing anticlerical, argues that traditions often come with oppressive hierarchies and habits of intolerance that require the evolution of liberalism in defense of human rights. This might serve as evidence that liberals like Kuttner can't accept a normative consensus without looking for inquisitors behind every tree. Such heightened awareness of potential tyranny is well known in this country. It can be found on the left and the right alike as each sees the other as the potential tyrant. If we can no longer acquiesce in electoral defeat without worrying that tyranny is imminent, then one can argue -- though I don't say this is Deneen's argument -- that liberalism, however you define it, is failing. But while all sides seemingly grow more weary of Americans' absolute right to be assholes, I don't know if hyper-individualism is the true seed of liberalism's downfall. Liberalism is a product of particular historic conditions that no longer apply as they did in liberalism's heyday. You don't need to be a Marxist to believe this, and Marxists probably are wrong to see liberalism (or, as they'd say, bourgeois values) as characteristic of a mere stage, inevitably left behind, in human progress. It may be more useful to see the liberal/bourgeois epoch as an exceptional but not necessarily irreproducible episode in a more cyclical pattern of history -- perhaps as a high point from which decline rather than progress is inevitable, but definitely something that can't be permanent. If that's the case, the question of liberalism's failure would be as much a "when" as a "why." It could well be that Deneen is asking the wrong question, and Kuttner is giving the wrong answer anyway.

Evo-lution or Revolution

Evo Morales, Bolivia's leader since 2006, resigned over the weekend after losing the support of the country's military amid protests against alleged fraud in recent elections. Predictably, the global left sees Morales' fall as a coup d'etat, while the right (and many self-styled centrists) sees it as a victory for civil society, people power, etc. over a socialist caudillo. It comes as something as a surprise, since for all that Morales was as radical as Hugo Chavez and his movement in Venezuela, his government had seemed less tumultuous or dysfunctional than the Bolivarian regime. Yet there were signs that Morales' own people were tiring of him. His referendum to overturn term limits so he could remain in office had been defeated at the polls, though friendly judges found a questionable "human rights" excuse to overturn them anyway. Morales clearly saw himself as the sort of indispensable man that the sort of democratic revolution his supposedly was shouldn't really need. Unfortunately, self-conscious revolutions too often suffer from a sense of dependence upon strong personal will. Socialist revolutions seem particularly vulnerable to this dependency, and to the temptation to see individual leaders as indispensable. The Cincinnatus archetype has little appeal on the left, perhaps because it's a patrician archetype -- the leftist presumably has no plantation to which he longs to return, and does not see politics as a burdensome imposition on his personal life. They live to carry out revolution and so probably find it hard to imagine themselves retired from revolution. Yet to the extent that any of them believe their own revolutions to be democratic, they should not want them to be dependent on any one individual's will or vision. No one claiming to lead a democratic revolution should believe himself indispensable to history. That so many leaders do see themselves that way only lends credence to conservative, libertarian or anarchist charges that leftist revolutionaries are interested more in imposing their will on others than in liberating others. That being said, in Bolivia it could be argued that Morales had done enough by promising to hold a new election. To claim that the government can't be trusted to conduct a fair election is a grave charge, but one easily made by parties accustomed, as in Bolivia, to losing when victory seemed theirs by right. The possibility that Morales needed to be removed by extra-electoral means can't be ruled out absolutely -- nor can such possibilities be ruled out anywhere -- but the swiftness with which Bolivia reverted to a sad South American pattern is most likely to encourage those on the left who see the democratic revolutions in Bolivia and Venezuela as failed or hopelessly flawed experiments, overly vulnerable to counterrevolutionary or "imperialist" manipulation. Should the hapless Maduro finally fall in Venezuela, we may well see a reversion on the left to all-out Leninist tactics, including the immediate suppression of all opposition during the seizure of power. While others may draw different lessons from Morales' career, some may conclude that his real failing was his failure to seize absolute power and eliminate his enemies as soon as possible. It's not clear whether what's happening in Bolivia is a right-wing coup or not, but if right-leaning authoritarianism seems ascendant in much of the world, a violent revival of Leninism in response should surprise no one.

Sign of an off-year election

Seen today in Albany NY

Who knew that job was subject to a vote? Did anyone see a "Give Us Barabbas" sign anywhere?...