Petri Lahtinen & Max Tallberg
The concept of liberalism can be easily understood solely as a political phenomenon but instead it is a question of wide range of historical and current belief systems and theories. In addition, these systems and theories can be characterized as philosophical, political, societal, or ideological – depending on the context. Due to the character and variety of liberalism, it is difficult to discern any unambiguous and comprehensive definitions and boundaries for it that would be able to capture all its temporal and local variations. However, in the very center of liberalist thought seven great concepts can be outlined: freedom, rationality, individualism, progress, sociability, common interest and limited and accountable power. Out of these, freedom can be justifiably viewed as the most central value. The whole ideology gets its name from the concept of freedom through the Latin word liber meaning ‘freedom’. However, the history of political thought cannot be reduced to the history of individual words. It is worth noting here that ‘liberalism’ and ‘liberal’ as explicitly political terms appeared in European languages at the beginning of the 19th century. Before then, liberalitas was one of the virtues, that is generosity, and at the same time a management technique implanted in the hearts of Renaissance rulers. In the 17th century, ‘liberal’ was also associated with freedom from prejudice; liberal meant tolerant and open-minded, but also in some ways flexible. Even though freedom is an abstract concept in itself, its definition has also changed over the various stages in the development of liberalism. When freedom is taken to be the value that defines liberalism most distinctly, the very roots of liberalism can be traced as back as antiquity and medieval Christianity. Texts included in the ancient Greek political tradition often focus on outlining the human impulses that lead to tyranny as well as means to bridle developments that enforce tyranny. These means including primarily the cultivation of virtues and autonomy. According to Greek thinkers, the development and the continuity of a functional and healthy city state require the implementation and maintenance of the four so-called cardinal virtues i.e. wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. Virtuousness should not be left solely as the responsibility of the state, but rather it should be extended to the souls of all citizens; the Greeks believed that self-government can be accomplished only in such a form of government that understands citizenship to be growing accustomed to virtues which happens through the laws, customs and education provided by the society.
Roman and medieval Christian philosophers carried on the Greek tradition by focusing on the cultivation of virtue as the focal means of defending oneself against the different forms of tyranny. On the foundation of this tradition various institutions were established that served the purpose of restraining rulers by providing means of expressing one’s public opinion informally – or even formally at times – regarding political rule. For example, already in 1215, a royal charter of rights known as Magna Carta was agreed to in Britain. Among other things, the charter established that even the rule of kings should be limited by law. Despite these historical roots, usually within modern research the so-called protoliberalists are understood to be such 17th and 18th century European thinkers as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume. Their central aim was to dissemble certain religious and social norms that were now considered irrational. Additionally, the foundations of liberalism laid down by these thinkers was to strive towards societal peace which, in turn, would advance stability, flourishment, and finally the freedom of individual conscience and activity. Classical and Christian virtuousness was now experienced as patronizing on the one hand and inefficient on the other hand since it was based on the conforming norms and societal structures. These norms and structures were seen as something penetrating the society as a whole as they influenced politics, social reality, religion, economics and family life. Simultaneously the shift in the general worldviews articulated by Francis Bacon gave birth to the notion that humankind should be set free from the control and limitations of nature. Instead, humans should subjugate nature and exploit its resources through scientific innovations and economic wealth.
The majority of the theoreticians of liberalism through history have viewed that every form of government has a significant task of realizing the freedom of the people. The central challenge in liberalism has always been – and still is – creating a system that balances between increasing and limiting freedom. Classical liberalism perceives that naturally free and equal individuals bring a limited state into existence by committing to a social contract. Already during antiquity, philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle believed that a society is being organized since people have numerous common needs which can be satisfied more easily collectively than self-sufficiently. Protoliberalists such as Hobbes and Locke, in turn, thought that people enter into a social contract not only to guarantee their own survival but securing the realization of their own freedom. Thus, one of the tasks of a liberal state is to free individuals from possible limiting circumstances and to regulate the societal well-being. At the same time, the state should secure an impartial position towards people’s different concepts of freedom while abstaining from intervening too actively to the matters of the individual. On the other hand, the relationship between the state and freedom is being understood increasingly though economics: the purpose of the state is to guarantee the freedom of commerce and trade – not so much the conditions for people’s flourishing and well-being. At the same time, the state expands the dimensions of trade especially by increasing the scale of business, production, and mobility.
The difference between various liberal thinkers and traditions usually concerns the issue of how the individual and societal freedoms should be defined. When it comes to freedom, the distinction is being made nowadays between positive and negative freedom based especially on the theories of Isaiah Berlin. Negative freedom refers to freedom from something and the absence of obstacles whereas positive freedom refers to freedom to something and of self-actualization. Similarly, liberalists are roughly divided into two camps: conservatives and progressives. In principle, the conservatives adopt a negative attitude towards the expansion of the state whereas the progressives often want to advance this expansion as a way of protecting the individual freedom. Tensions regarding the definition of freedom and its relationship between the individual and the state generate competition and juxtaposition between different players – whether it is the activity of political parties, politicians, or judicial and economic agents in question. Yet, within liberalism there is an assumption of its internal error-correctability that includes two great concepts of liberalism: rationality and progress. In social liberalism, for example, a central theory prevails regarding societal evolution according to which people become more rational and social in the course of time. In principle, people are assumed to be rational, moral, autonomous, and deliberate beings.
Liberalism also has a close but complicated relationship with democracy. The so-called liberal democracy does not refer to political ideology as such but rather to a form of government, a group of institutional political arrangements, and rule-based system. The triumph of liberalism in the ideological contest of the 20th century against fascism and communism has led to the situation where many regard liberal democracy as the only legitimate form of political organization; historical doubts about democracy being possibly degenerate and corrupt form of government has widely been forgotten and even when encountered, this criticism is considered reactionary, authoritarian, and even inhumane. Despite this, liberal democracy has increasingly received criticism. One of its major problems has been the so-called democratic competence of ordinary citizens and voters, which in practice means a lack of civic literacy, voting, and interest in public affairs. The symptoms of these have also been described by concepts such as the tyranny of the majority and the power of mediocrity. Liberalism’s own means of restraining the power of the majority relate to the tripartite division of power, the division between legislative, governmental and judicial powers, and the system of checks and balances designed to prevent the indivisible and unlimited power of a single actor. However, this tripartite system is now being eroded by what is known as illiberal democracy, which is a form of democracy based on the ability of a sovereign state to violate these foundations of the rule of law, rather than on the integrity of the individual’s fundamental rights and the doctrine of the tripartite system of power. Yet, legal liberalism and democracy cannot and should not be separated: there can be no democracy without fundamental political rights, and without democracy it is not possible to deal with the formulation and implementation of rights in a fair and equal way. In illiberal democracies, the people are at the mercy of those in power and at their whim, and while such leaders may occasionally implement features of the rule of law, they can also withdraw them at any moment if it serves their interests.
As already previously mentioned, liberalism has been regarded as the victor of the ideological contest of the 20th century: fascism was overthrown – at least ostensibly – in Europe when the dictator of Spain passed away in 1975 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 made Francis Fukuyama infamously announce naively and prematurely “the end of history”. Yet, it is evident that liberalism and its favorite ally, capitalism have not succeeded in establishing a healthy and sustainable form of government. Many people living in liberal democracies regard their governments as distant and indifferent, highjacked by the wealthy, and administrations that pursue only the privileges of those in power. At the same time, liberalism causes discontent by generating and maintaining a so-called anti-culture that has three central ideas: 1) the widespread conquest of nature which makes nature an independent object that demands saving through a conceptual elimination of humanity; 2) new experience of time as present without a past where the future is unknown territory; 3) order that makes place a concept that is replaceable and without distinction. Anti-culture is the consequence of such an administration that standardizes the laws and replaces widespread informal norms which it views as forms of oppression. Anti-culture results from universal and homogeneous markets that lead to a monoculture which, in turn, colonializes and destroys real cultures rooted in experience, history and place. Universal and homogenous markets in liberalism are also unrestricted and this coupled with the accumulation of wealth without societal justice result in profiteering and new unregulated power concentrations. Even though liberalism promises to dismantle traditional power structures, raise generally the living standard of all, and promote the freedom of everybody, it still divides people into winners and losers in the competition for social status. The power is still being inherited in societies, because attending elite schools and especially elite institutions of higher education is a method of becoming social and learning about the world in such a way which is respected by the traditional elite: the old, historical elite has only been replaced with a new aristocracy.
The failure of liberalism has generated, among other things, populist-national, authoritarian movements and military autocracy. At the same time, far-right actors are deliberately misappropriating liberalism as a political weapon to conceal the true intentions of the ideology and make its rhetoric easier to swallow. Similarly, many Marxist and postmodern thinkers sketch an antagonistic caricature of liberalism against which opposite views are easier to defend. Yet, currently many are justifiably concerned about the emergence of authoritarian governments and dictators within fictitious democracies. These aforementioned illiberal democracies have begun to appear in alarming numbers in Europe and within its borders in countries such as Poland, Hungary, Russia, and Turkey. Means of opposing the development of liberal democracies into illiberal democracies include the assertion of political institutions based on liberalism, the supernational integration of Europe, and sanctions. However, it must be understood that none of these means will directly solve the problem of popular will, i.e. the fact that people oppose liberal democratic institutions and support illiberal political extremism. There is no need to make substantive concessions in situations where no one really knows exactly why some citizens vote for populist parties. Nor is it always necessary to appeal to “truth” or “reason” per se when arguing against populists. What is needed is a clear distinction between acceptable and unacceptable attitudes, which ideally sends an unambiguous signal to populists as well: it will never be possible to work with them unless they abandon their unequal and potentially destructive anti-pluralism. When analyzing illiberal democracies, it is worth remembering the historical roots of liberalism: ironically, liberalism can be seen as having originally emerged as a reaction against such forms of governance, which were perceived as arbitrary and unjust.
The appeal of liberalism can still be seen to lie in its continuity that is connected with the deepest convictions of Western political tradition – especially with the efforts to secure freedom and human value by limiting tyranny, arbitrary rule, and oppression. The historical rise and the global appeal are based on liberalism’s fundamental conviction to freedom. People that are subject to arbitrary rule, inequality, and poverty understandably are attracted by liberalism since it should – at least in theory – be able to provide wealth, relatively stable politics, and individual freedom. The strengthening of liberal democracy requires the re-evaluation of freedom and other important concepts of liberalism. At the same time, the education, interest towards societal issues, turnout, and political activity of citizens should be increased if true democracy is to be pursued. As liberalism replaces culture with the aforementioned anti-culture, it undermines education – especially general knowledge and liberal arts. Liberalism fully realized reduces culture into freedom as a certain kind of independence and the education of free people is replaced with an education which turns free individuals into servants to desire, restlessness, and technical mastery over nature. Liberal arts, general intelligence, critical upbringing, and decision-making based on scientific facts can be believed to have positive effects through which people learn to exercise and use their freedom educated, wisely and virtuously – something that originates from antiquity. Social freedom can therefore be understood as the common good of a well-functioning society, in exchange for which individuals should use their freedom responsibly. Virtually all social contracts assume that the exercise of an individual’s own freedom should not restrict the freedom of others or harm them. In contrast, the direct or indirect harm the individual does to him/herself is a particularly problematic issue for liberalism; should liberalism, in accordance with the principle of liberty, allow the individual full self-determination, or should society restrict the freedom of an individual when it is deemed harmful to him/herself? Nowadays, especially food items classified as unhealthy and drug abuse are hot topics within this theme.
The failure of liberalism is particularly evident in the light of the current environmental crises, which have brought both humans and other living beings to the brink of existential threat. The causes of the link between liberalism and the current ecological crises are numerous and complex; they can therefore only be examined superficially in the context of this text. First, classical liberalism has long been dominated by a certain project of liberation, which seeks to free the humankind from the ‘tyranny’ of nature and instead strives towards the domination of nature. Thus, liberalism encourages people, for example, to study the so-called hard sciences instead of the more traditional liberal arts, which it sees as useful because they contribute to the mastery of nature. Again, conservative liberals see the conquest of nature as a technological mastery of nature, while progressive liberals go further, aiming at the mastery of the human genetic code. To return to the topic of individual freedom, it can be argued that the ever-expanding individual freedom is in fact a creation of sprawling and complex technological systems that at the same time seemingly free humans from both nature and duty but also make us feel powerless, voiceless, lonely – and not free. The development of entertainment and information technologies in particular has led to a number of extreme phenomena that cause people to experience isolation, alienation and loneliness. In short, modern technology undermines our sense of community and makes us more individualistic.
The current mutation of liberalism, neoliberalism, is committed to the belief that the market should be the organizing principle for all political, social, and economic decision-making. In neoliberalism, everything is either up for sale or to be plundered for profit. However, according to the principles of strong sustainability, ‘resource’ should be understood as a finite concept within the planetary boundaries, and hence the current libertarian view of nature, where nature is understood primarily as a resource to be controlled and exploited, is not sustainable. Central to this point is the alliance between liberalism and capitalism, which exploits and destroys the common good of nature in unsustainable ways. We have already written on this subject elsewhere, and there is not space here to repeat all the essential criticisms on the subject. Suffice it to say that, in this light, the central question for liberalism becomes its ever-embedded problem of the relationship between freedom and the restriction of it; should society restrict the market, economic activity, and consumer behavior if it promotes the continuity of life on our planet? Taking a more positive stance, one can also legitimately argue that societies should support the freedom of individuals to realistically make more environmentally sustainable choices. For example, through taxation, governments can support, among other things, more low-carbon mobility and housing, and a plant-based diet. In the context of environmental crises, liberal democracies need to be reassessed, taking into account that current liberal democracies are in some places very different from the societies and forms of governance that liberalism originally opposed. Again, the role of civilization and knowledge based on independent scientific facts is important here if strong sustainability is to be pursued at both state and individual level. Society has the responsibility not only to make large structures sustainable, but also to steer culture in a direction that is sparser when it comes to both consumption and energy – be it through taxation, informed decision-making or individual consumption choices. Like the environmental crises themselves, the above policies form an interconnected web in which no single issue can make enough difference. It is important to recognize at this point that we are living at a time when climate change and other environmental crises constitute a unique and acute threat in the history of humankind, which can no longer be addressed by classical liberalism and its democratic means alone if the conditions of life are to be preserved for posterity.
It is also necessary to challenge the notion of whether individuals are as “free” under contemporary liberalism as they are often made out to be. Today, the liberal state extends its control over almost every aspect of life, while citizens see the government as a distant and uncontrollable power that only extends the sense of powerlessness of citizens as it relentlessly promotes the project of ‘globalization’. Liberalism, as it were, pretends to be neutral, claiming to have no preferences and denying any intention to fundamentally shape humanity. Liberalism, many believe, no longer promotes real freedom, but seeks to seduce people with easy, illusory freedoms, distractions and various productized temptations of freedom, pleasure, and wealth. Instead of creating their own culture, grounded in localism, rooted in time, and usually developed from the heritage of relatives, neighbors and community, most people living in liberal democracies consume pre-packaged, market-tested and mass-marketed consumer goods. Liberalism therefore assumes that the improved ability to buy cheap and often disposable goods will compensate for economic instability and the growing unequal distribution of wealth. Even if liberalism has succeeded in dismantling old historical power structures, the new aristocracy and unequal distribution of wealth that has developed with it perpetuate conditions in which human heredity and social status inevitably impose constraints on individual agency.
Liberalism’s assumption of human beings as rational and purposeful agents is also called into question by modern developments. People’s decisions are influenced by such means as populism, appealing to emotions, advertising, the creation of new desires and marketing. It is also justifiable to ask whether, for example, the extreme individual freedom advocated by libertarianism, the emphasis on individualism, the assumption of a higher rationality and freedom of action on the part of individuals and the compulsive defense of private property are worth maintaining. Freedom can still rightly be argued to have retained its status as a central and desirable value, and even a virtue, but its concept should be more widely examined in the present – especially as the application of freedom relates to issues crucial to the future of humanity. By placing particular emphasis on individual freedom, modern liberalism breeds a culture of individualism, social and societal selfishness, and self-interest. Freedom should therefore be seen as a multifaceted concept that can mean very different things in different areas of life, at different times and in different places. In the case of freedom, the anti-cultural aspects of liberalism should be challenged and it should be understood that in the current complex global world, freedom cannot be universal, commensurate, and timeless. For a just and equal world, individual freedom can be viewed constructively in terms of the satisfaction of basic needs and human capabilities, while still remembering that the freedom of others and access to the same preconditions for dignified human life should not be compromised.
In the pursuit of a better world, we do not necessarily have to reject liberalism, but rather critically ask what kind of social systems can be built on its basis. In doing so, we should first recognize the achievements of liberalism and its positive values. At the same time, we can ask whether it would be possible to reject ideology in the development of liberalism. Instead of looking for a substitute ideology for liberalism, we could focus on developing practices that promote new forms of culture, households, and civic life. In analyzing illiberal democracies, we can turn to philosophers and sociologists such as Hannah Arendt, Erich Fromm and Robert Nisbet, who understood one of the key features of modern totalitarianism to be that it emerged and gained power through the discontent generated by isolation and solitude. In particular, Nisbet argues that the active disappearance of traditional human communities and institutions has created conditions in which people’s basic need for community has gone unmet. Judith Shaklar thought that instead of further refining the formulas of a just society, we should first understand the experiences of injustice and humiliation in everyday life, but also the great crimes of historical totalitarian regimes. It will then become clear that the most important distinction in society is always between the weak and the strong. Through this, it should become recognizable that only an effective separation of powers and a broad decentralization of power can prevent the worst, i.e. the greatest, human and social atrocities. Instead of the current trajectories of liberalism, we have an opportunity to focus on nurturing care, community, patience, humility, appreciation, and modesty. At the same time, we can become more active in households, local communities and markets, rediscovering old practices and creating new ones that foster new forms of culture that liberalism otherwise tends to erode.
SOURCES:
Deneen, Patrick J.: Why Liberalism Failed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018.
Freeden, Michael: Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Giroux, H., A.: ‘The Terror of Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Significance of Cultural Politics.’ College Literature 32(1), 2005.
Müller, Jan-Werner: Furcht und Freiheit: Ein anderer Liberalismus. Berlin, Suhrkamp Verlag 2019.
Suuronen, Ville: ”Demokratiaa ilman liberalismia? Carl Schmitt parlamentarismin kriisistä ja illiberaalin demokratian aatehistorialliset juuret”. niin & näin 4/21: 37-47.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/checks-and-balances.asp
https://tieteentermipankki.fi/wiki/Oikeustiede:checks_and_balances_-oppi
