Profile Books Liberalism and Its Discontents

This is a very well-written and clearly-argued defence of the liberal order. It is a must-read for anybody interested in politics, national development, international affairs, and strategy.

Nowadays, everyone shall read this book. Masterfully written.

This is a joy to read. FF writes clearly and convincingly. The brevity is deceptive – he covers immense terrain, and you have to think about every paragraph. You nod along, agreeing, and when you have an objection, you find that he anticipated it and offers a fair retort.Bless him for first defining his terms. Most public debate is strawmen, false flags, and labels without meaning. “Liberalism” to FF is roughly “the West,” another misleading word, as we have managed since 1945. “The open society” is protean; it waxes and wanes in time and space. Yet it is respectful of individuals, rule-of-law based, universalist in message, and meliorist (improving) in ambition. Per FF, Liberalism has three justifications: pragmatic, economic, and moral. (This is actually a trinity, 3 sides of the same thing; what if you “did the right thing” but everybody died? This is important, for dogmatics think that way).Liberalism just works - yet people tend to hate it. At least until the Devil shows up, and then it’s quiet again for a while. CLASS!!!! FF’s method is to show how freedom’s critics begin with fair complaints, then veer into dogmatic rants that permit no facts-based correction. This is the new normal in the Internet age; all can now congregate in their own fantasy worlds of costless dogmatism. Liberalism has a built-in death wish: excess, degeneracy, cretinization.FF groks that liberalism is NOT democracy – they are in constant tension. Indeed, the modern quasi-free state is a tripod: liberalism, the administrative state, and democracy. Each is very dangerous on its own. They must balance each other. People instinctively want freedom for themselves, but not for others. Thus, as Platon warned, “democracy” degenerates into tyranny, as an angry mob elects Caligulas, turns legislatures into insane asylums, elections into vomit-fests, and at last kills the system that indulged it.The maligned administrative state (Platonic meritocracy), if strongly rooted, can check mobs run amok. (Last resort: military intervention – we got close.) Toqueville told us that democracy has a “depraved” aspect; now we can add “deranged.” The liberal live-and-let-live ethic is not intuitive to humans, it is contingent in time and space, and must be patiently inculcated over time.FF has a “pendulum” theory of history. He abhors the extremes and pleads for self-correction. He critiques both the wokist left and the “neoliberals.” (But where are they now? Is he beating a dead horse? Seems he has more trouble explaining neofascism.) Fair advocacy for groups quickly turns into “identity” politics, i.e., arbitrary factions railing against their “oppressors.” In the limit, both left and right turn into zombies speaking in tongues about “intersectionality” and “replacement” or “critical race” theory. FF respects the craving for justice, whether for individuals or groups, but warns of the end state: tyranny.Here he has ahold of a very basic phenomenon. To become popularly adopted, philosophical insights degenerate into vulgar caricatures. (Ask Jesus or Marx – and even FF must rue that he will always be Mr. History is Over.) At the end, the ideology rolls inverted and begins a new cognitive rule of terror. Modern example: Foucault’s deconstruction of language, FF says, turns lycanthrope, using language for power. You “deconstruct” ruling-class narratives to get something: power, fame, tenure, laid? Thus we wind up with Christian Haters; Marxist Ruling Classes; embryo-lovers who care not of actual children; anti-racist agitators who are in fact hyper-racists to whom nothing matters but race.A related pattern: FF exposes the tautology of dogma carried ad absurdum. First to get the evil eye: the “neoliberals” (the Hayek-Friedman line). (It’s another pejorative, favored by Europeans). Its dogma: the market is always right, and freedom is the only value regardless of results. Per FF, libertarians “hate the state” and don’t see how much they need it to protect their “rights.”Here FF caricatures the ideology, not surprisingly since the crude form does adopt such tropes. In theory, libertarians merely “hate” coercion and concentrations of power – state, economy, church, criminals. Thus, liberalism should NOT become hyperindividualistic in extremis; you can have libertarian communism, as in kibbutzim. This gets lost. Examples: The market is not “right,” it's just what happens sans dictates. GDP growth is not “good” – it tells you how fast you’re going, but not in what direction.FF comments on the free market as the social equivalent of Darwinian evolution. Just as Darwin cannot tell us which species is “right,” neither can “laissez-faire” show us which system is “correct.” Who wins must ipso facto have been the “fittest,” thus the tautology. Collectivism may prevail, or individualism - it’s all contingent. “Equality” per se is not good or bad; but systems get rigged by the powerful. We don’t have to like it just because Darwin says the fittest win.Yes, but. Take the popular strawman “Social Darwinism.” A Natural-Science perspective on social order can’t tell us what we “should” do, but it does tell us how things actually work; it cuts thru the BS. For example, FF disapprovingly quotes Public Choice Theory. But its value lies in reminding us that the public (state) actors are equally self-interested organisms at the public trough just as are corporations, the difference being that the latter don’t have an army. (Excepting “regulatory capture!”) In essence, PCT says, “Capitalism bad? Try dog-eat-dog socialism!”The same occurs in FF’s assertion that humans are not, in fact, RUMIs (rational utility-maximizing individuals) as Chicago-school economists fantasize. They have all kinds of goals and are often fooled. He correctly identifies the tautology: if all critters act in self-interest, even when seemingly altruistic (as in collective security), then the RUMI theory is useless as guidance, 0=0.Yes, but! Organisms do always act in self-interest – it is impossible not to – they are just not very good at it (we are apes!). The theory tells us what happens in fact, “was eigentlich geschah” - not what people (and their manipulators) pretend. Right or left, we must always ask, “who stands to gain from this argument?” We can see the hook: “Social justice” means “I want your stuff.” “Public safety” translates as “protect my privilege,” and so on. Then we must ask, “Does this policy actually work as intended?”Interesting section on Nationalism. FF’s compromising instinct drives him to denounce its excess, but he asserts its importance in civic engagement, as a driver of social order. This sounds like “a little hate is a good thing.” What he means is that civic virtue is essential, and maybe FF just runs afoul of his definitions. Nationalism, like its twin, religion, does many good works - just not because of it. Civic virtue is an independent variable, but frequently corrupted by these. Yes, the best way to be a good European is to be a good German, Frenchman, etc – but this means the best way to be a good citizen is to be a good citizen, wherever you are. 0=0.Segue: FF shows how “identity politics” is a resurgence of the nationalist insanity that destroyed Europe last century and spread from there. It bodes ill, but it also illustrates a very important paradox that FF does not address: People are often more free in authoritarian states than in run-away democracies. Take the polyglot Habsburg Empire. Compare with the sterile ethnic monocultures that replaced them. Take colonies: many (not all) were much freer under colonial rule. “States” are not free; people are free. Take the United States, which FF correctly calls a vetocracy, a failed democracy. Freedom also means that things actually work!This leads to a closing observation. Interestingly, FF traces liberalism not thru the Magna Carta line that Anglo-Saxons rote-learn, but to the Peace of Westfalen (1648), when Europeans gave up trying to kill each other over who loved God more. There is a subtle twist to this: that reluctant modus vivendi meant tolerance for states, not individuals. You’d still get a head shorter if you didn’t agree with your king. This continental notion survives to this day. In contrast, anarchic America was set up as a place where all were free to believe anything, and see, that’s exactly what they turned out to do!The liberal idea is largely an American one, resented both at home and abroad, but it has been so successful that most advanced nations have slowly acceded to it. FF, would liberty exist anywhere if the U.S. revolution had been suppressed? That the experiment is now off the rails is another story.FF declines to give a laundry list of reforms to defend the open society from its enemies, but identifies basic principles: individual respect, tolerance, subsidiarity (devolved power), and ends with the Hellenic ideal of moderation. Yet Cicero told us moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. I think he again has a definition issue: Its not moderation we need, but realism. Realize we are just stumbling about the best we can; realize that there are no “right” answers, and every solution creates another problem; realize that all decisions are driven by cost-benefit analyses, not dogma. Thus the building of social order is a lot like a visit to the optometrist – Better – or – Worse? North Korea - or - South Korea, PRC or ROC? We see what works, and we should fix what doesn’t. Expect howling discontents; that’s liberty’s nature.FF has written more about the origins of social order than most of us can read. He struggles ever with the directionality of history, and its “end.” I think history is a giant Rorschach test: the stories we imagine in the random scatter tells us about ourselves, not about reality. It is possible that history tends to always oscillate around an equilibrium of liberty and tyranny, since the first works, and the second is parasitic. But it is equally possible that we are in the cataclysmic end stage of a runaway, unsustainable human civilization. FF could “really” be right this time: the End!

opera di facile lettura e con spunti interessantissimi, solo qualche spunto polemico poco approfondito, ma nel complesso l'Autore con questa fornisce un ennesimo apporto rilevante alla letteratura e storiografia sul pensiero politico

The liberalism referred to in this Fukuyama's work is classical liberalism in the tradition of Mill and Kant, not the popular notion used in US politics which is about the left of centre progressive politics. Fukuyama's sees liberalism as being  undermined when its core principles are pushed to the extreme by its advocates both to its left and right in such a way that its core principles are no longer being implemented with the intended results.     Classical liberalism turns into neoliberalism when protection and valorisation of individual autonomy is pushed too far as exemplified by American libertarianism and Chicago school economics which are hostile to any government interference of social and economic affairs by individuals. Neoliberalism during the Thatcher and Reagan years was pushed to the extreme  making such that state intervention was opposed and privatisation was advocated as a basic principle. Though deregulation can enable growth in sectors of economy, it proved to be disastrous in the financial sector during the 80s and 90s when large banks took imprudent financial risks as seen in the collapse of the Lehman brothers and subprime mortgage crisis in the late 2000s. The global payment system froze up and was rescue by the introduction of liquidity by US federal reserve and central banks that neoliberalism opposes. Excessive deregulation in neoliberalism, though enabled a drastic increase of the aggregate of income by 2010 but led to a drastic increase of inequalities within countries. Many countries saw the emergence of a small class of oligarchs and multi billionaires that dominates the market system leaving smaller investors with stifled economic options.Fukuyama also discusses the criticisms of classical liberalism. Liberalism is seen to be promoting a selfish individualism in its emphasis of protecting individual freedom. But Fukuyama thinks a liberal society offers individual freedom to joint any groups people want meeting individual needs to be sociable. It further offers the degree to which one wants to be sociable. Another related criticism of liberalism is pushing for a sovereignty of the individuals that can be a hindrance to communal engagement and to turn people from public spirited ness that are needed to sustain a liberal polity.  (A standard critique by communitarians against Rawlsian liberalism.) People can just stay in their immediate parochial community of families and friends,  and resign from society.In Fukuyama's work, the chapter titled "The Critique of Rationality" addresses how liberalism has been undermined by modern critical theories. A distinctive feature of classical liberalism is its affinity with the scientific method for analysis and criticism. As much as liberalism accepts a diversity of moral doctrines that people may not come to an agreement on any single more virtuous one,  it accepts a world of objective facts that can be studied and theorised by empirical scientific method. Critical theories in structuralism and postmodernism originated from Foucault and Derrida suggested the language of science is merely a tool to mask the exercise of power of one class of elite over the subordinate classes, making science to be another power structure play. This approach is used since then by the progressive left in the US to interpret racial issues as not so much just about individual, social and policy problem but as a power problem pervaded US institutions and consciousness reflecting a power structure of white supremacy embedded in the language to interpret the world. Interestingly this progressive left hermeneutics is also adapted by the far-right in its anti-intellectual and anti-science rhetoric against the scientific community when it comes to scientific opinion in public policies such as mask wearing, vaccines, and the pandemic . The treatment of the scientific method as merely another political verbal power play undermines the rationality basis for liberalism.Another way in which liberalism has been undermined is the stifling  of its foundational principle of free speech.  The concentration of power in private media has monopolized dissemination of media channel as seen in Berlusconi's media empire used in political power. (I would add Rupert Murdoch control of right wing media as another example). A more recent way free speech is being degraded  is the massive volume of information explosion from the internet. The output of information has no quality control as in peer reviews in academic journals, or sources vetting in journalism. Social media platforms favours information that are sensationalised for attracting more users. Such easy and massive output of online information has become weaponised by the far-right to consolidate partisan  supporters and introduce conspiracy theories for political mobilisation.This work provides a very comprehensive description of classical liberalism and the rise of neoliberalism. Fukuyama also illustrates common criticism and issues of liberalism as well as contemporary challenges seen in both the left and the right  to liberalism and to existing liberal societies. There is a lot of helpful  analyses packed in such a short work for readers to digest.