Why Liberalism Failed

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapter 6-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Unsustainability of Liberalism

At the center of Deneen’s work is his claim that liberalism has failed because liberalism has succeeded: Liberalism has demonstrated its own failure “because it was true to itself” (3). In Deneen’s view, liberalism as an ideology or political system is intrinsically unsustainable thanks to its commitment to certain first principles and ideals that Deneen regards as deeply flawed.

Deneen critiques some of liberalism’s foundational assumptions about human nature and the political and social contract that underpins them. Due to its anthropological assumption that human beings are naturally free and inherently possess all that they need to be, liberalism demands that government and society at large ensure the maximum degree of individual freedom and choice instead of focusing on the common good. Liberalism also demands an ever-increasing possibility of choices through which individuals can design their lives. The problem is that liberalism allows for the worst tendencies of human beings to thrive (if certain individuals should choose to do so) by refusing to place certain limitations on the populace that would prevent a small subset of the most powerful and the wealthiest from becoming entrenched in positions of power.

As a result of this flawed understanding of human nature and society, Deneen believes that liberalism is ultimately unsustainable in a social, political, and even environmental sense. By tying individual choice to consumerism and economic self-enrichment, liberalism places what Deneen regards as a heavy over-emphasis on technology and the needs of the market at the expense of the intellectual, spiritual, and/or emotional needs of individuals and communities, leading to The Destruction of Organic Culture. Politically, liberalism claims to be intrinsically linked to democracy and the will of the people, but Deneen asserts that liberal democracies only result in a new aristocracy based on money, with the political elite corrupted by favors, lobbying, and a desire to remain in government at all costs. This suggests that democracy itself becomes unsustainable under liberalism. Deneen argues that liberalism is also bad for the environment because it creates a dynamic in which humans seek to dominate and exploit nature instead of living in harmony with it.

Additionally, another danger of liberalism is that it can be difficult to critique and reform, thanks to the vagueness of some of its aims and principles. Deneen argues that of the three major political ideologies of the last two centuries—liberalism, fascism, and communism—liberalism’s commitments are the most difficult to discern: “[A]s an ideology, it pretends to neutrality, claiming no preference and denying any intention of shaping the souls under its rule” (5). Deneen counters that there is no such thing as true neutrality, for even the neutral regime of liberalism brings with it a host of implicit assumptions and demands that prove to be very much not neutral. In attempting to highlight and analyze what he regards as the inherent flaws of liberalism, Deneen hopes to expose its unsustainability and urge readers to consider a different path for the future.

The Destruction of Organic Culture

The English word “culture” traces its etymological roots to the two concepts of “cultivation” and “cult.” Traditionally, a culture revolved around the kind of people that shared in that culture, the kinds of things they did and built, and the type of worship they engaged in as a community. Modern liberalism tends to diminish the importance of traditional, localized cultures thanks to its assumptions about what culture actually is and how it came into being. Deneen believes that liberalism has destroyed this older idea of culture to the detriment of communities.

Modern liberals tend to view culture as artificial and created in an arbitrary and sometimes even oppressive fashion. Various norms and customs that used to be viewed as traditional are now often spoken of as “culturally conditioned,” as though they were arbitrary and could just as easily be different. The ancients thought quite differently about the reality of culture: “Far from being understood as opposites of human nature, customs and manners were understood to be derived from, governed by, and necessary to the realization of human nature” (68-69). Thus, liberalism’s tendency to view traditional culture as opposed to human nature represents, for Deneen, a radical departure from previous eras that asserted that culture was a reflection of human nature and a form of fulfilling man’s intrinsic needs and desires.

In Deneen’s view, liberalism competes with and disintegrates localized cultures thanks to its greater anthropological and economic commitments. Liberalism idolizes individual choice and the absence of restrictions and arbitrary limits; all these things are in tension with culture since culture always involves some aspect of tradition and received wisdom while also typically placing more emphasis on community than individualism. When culture is rooted in the past, it necessarily involves conforming oneself to that tradition, rather than attempting to conform all of reality to one’s own vision and desires. Deneen suggests that liberalism’s economic ideals have further contributed to this erosion of localized cultures by encouraging individuals to treat themselves as rootless and autonomous, moving away to wherever the best opportunities for economic and personal self-enrichment may be. Deneen argues that liberalism is even an “anticulture” because it creates a homogenized monoculture based on atomized individuality, consumerism, and rejecting the limitations of traditional community in the name of pursuing one’s own desires.

Finally, liberalism’s tendency to centralize authority and power destroys culture by this very centralization and homogenization. In a regime that values more distributed forms and systems of governmental oversight, more localized communities will be self-sustaining and thus able to perpetuate local cultural customs and traditions. Liberalism’s drive toward centrality destroys this possibility, giving rise to the monoculture seen in today’s liberal democratic societies.

The Loss of Individual Virtue and Self-Restraint

Deneen states that modern liberal theory is radically different from ancient theories and forms of government that also claimed to provide freedom and individual realization. For Deneen, the core of this difference is liberalism’s redefinitions of liberty and happiness and its opposing views on what human life should ultimately be about. In prioritizing individuality and unfettered choice, modern liberalism has led to the erosion of traditional virtue and self-restraint.

When modern liberals talk about liberty, they usually mean an individual’s right and agency to make a personal choice without interference or extrinsic penalty for pursuing the good of that particular choice. Liberty is conceived as highly personal and individualized and as something that every person should simply have by existing: “[M]odern theory defines liberty as the greatest possible pursuit and satisfaction of the appetites, while government is a conventional and unnatural limitation upon this pursuit” (48). Additionally, the concept of liberty often includes the assumption that each person is free to decide what choice will be good for them and that the very act of having the power of free choice is evidence enough of its goodness.

The ancient view of liberty, however, is radically different. While it contained an aspect of the power of choosing particular goods, it also included more restrictions and more emphasis on the common good. Liberty was related not to an individual’s personal rights, but to an individual’s responsibility as a human being and a fellow citizen. The traditional idea of a “liberal arts” education reinforced this notion of liberty, with the ancients asserting that freedom was not an inherent condition, but one that was gained through the development of personal virtues and discipline: “Greek philosophy stressed paideia, or education in virtue, as a primary path to forestalling the establishment of tyranny and protecting liberty of citizens” (22). Liberty was thus the power to make the correct choice—the correct choice for the mutual good of both the individual and the community. A person thus needed to learn to be virtuous and to exercise self-restraint to actually use their freedom well.

By contrast, Deneen argues that liberalism has no reference to virtue and the ability of a person to make good choices because it claims total neutrality, rendering it unable and unwilling to make any claims about what is actually good or bad in any universal sense. Deneen suggests that this has led to a sense of moral apathy in modern liberal democracies, in which individuals care so much about their own personal rights and self-actualization that they fail to care about becoming more virtuous or more aware of the needs of the common good.