Posted by gomiami1972 on 2/6/2020 9:34:00 PM (view original):
Posted by italyprof on 2/6/2020 6:37:00 PM (view original):
"Why Liberalism Failed" by Patrick Deneen.
So, why does a Marxist love a book by a Catholic conservative?
Well, because he is right. This book is not about the failure of American liberals. Or at least not ONLY about the failure of their philosophical project, but about the failure of Liberalism as a way of life, including classical Liberalism, or what most conservatives call ...Conservatism, (including the two steroid-enhanced versions of liberalism and conservatism - postmodernism on the left, and libertarianism or Ayn Randism on the right).
In other words, this is a rare work of great scope, great integrity, great courage, that shows unflinchingly that the whole liberal project of basing human society on a concept of an abstract, disconnected individual existing in a world without any community, any social attributes, family, ethnicity, nationality, gender etc. as a basis for universal rights could only 1) undermine all forms of community, 2) become a self-fulfllling prophecy as trying to put it into practice isolated us all from all connections that might maintain our sense of place, belonging, comfort, solidarity, and fulfillment, and so 3) isolate us making it easier for us all to fall prey to 4) the global market and big corporations and 5) as the presumed solution to that predation, a large, centralized, ever less-democratic, technocratic and bureacratic national state.
In other words, liberals have succeeded ONLY in winning the sexual revolution cultural parts of their agenda, while the parts that involve greater equality, more economic democracy and a stronger voice at work have gone in reverse, while conservatives have only succeeded in the part of their agenda that involves freeing the rich and business and finance to exploit people, work and resources without mercy, remorse, limits, taxes or regulations, while their social agenda of restoring the family, community, religious standards, etc. has gone nowhere.
Deneen shows why and how this has happened, and why it is no accident, liberalism was set up from the time of the Founding Fathers on to work that way.
But as liberalism now destroys even the liberal arts, as only the business, finance and technical areas are seen as worth studying, meaning the very bases of civilization are undermined by liberalism's logical outcome, the jig is up.
This work is one of the most important I have read in a long time. It is time to find new ways to base society on community, rather than the market, corporations or the state, on communities rather than abstract individuals who presumably have all the rights they could want but have no power to affect anything and so are in fact helpless before the forces of the market, big business and government bureaucracies.
Well worth your read. Suggested accompaniment: the works of Wendell Berry.
This is not at all a rebuke of italyprof's summary.
I have not read this work so I withhold final judgment but, on first glance (based on this abstract) I would tend to reject the premise outright. For me, the author does not appear to appreciate, or is conveniently ignoring, the substantive differences between the philosophical and the political meanings for the various terms. Philosophically, postmodernism is in opposition to liberalism, which is firmly rooted in Enlightenment doctrine. Libertarianism, philosophically, is neither "left" nor "right." Libertarian philosophy creates a third direction altogether (I guess up or down in opposition to authoritarianism if you want a directional visual.)
With that said, if we are talking political movement only, which is an entirely separate argument, a partial case can be made for the failure of political liberalism. That is not surprising, in and of itself. Philosophy is theoretical. Politics are applied. In theory, Marx is profound and thought-provoking. In Das Kapital-esque literal practice, it would be living hell.
I'll probably read the book based on the thoughtful summary italyprof has supplied but it sounds as if Deneen is making a staggering logical fallacy.
Thanks for a thoughtful post.
It is true that postmodernism rejects the Enlightenment, but in other ways it extends liberalism's focus on an abstract individual, since it sees all forms of community as "socially constructed" (which if taken literally would be a good thing but that isn't what they mean), and so illegitimate as authorities.
Indeed, the rejection of any basis for legitimate authority, be it traditional or democratic and popular, is in common to classical liberalism, postmodernism, and libertarianism.
So while postmodernism certainly comes from a different starting point, the author's concern is with community as the necessary basis for all culture, cultural values, civilization, sense of belonging, moral integrity, and even, really individuality in a profound sense.
The market, the bureaucratic state, liberal philosophy (Locke and the rest), libertarian conservatism, postmodernism, all undermine community AND are all self-reinforcing despite being on opposing sides, since if the market wrecks family and community, we have only the state to give us a sense of belonging, and to protect us, but as isolated, de-community-ized individuals, we have little control over the state, which instead easily falls into the hands of big business and so ends up extending even further the domain of the market, just as the market's extension inadvertently but inexorably extends the reach of the state.
Self-government, active citizenship, community, solidarity, all these end up suffering, and we are all easily convinced we have only two choices: the party of the state (and more cultural individualism, which easily ends up in the hands of business and market forces that meet it as consumer demand), or the party of the market (and more economic individualism, which ends up reinforcing the power of big corporations over our lives, and so leads to us to reasonably see the state as our only protector against such power).
A good book. By someone as far from me ideologically as it is possible to be, but who has great insight I think.