Postliberalism

Why, since the 1970s, has liberalism become so virulent? And why is it inclined to break down, or to drastically mutate, as we now see? In answer to the second question, liberalism involves a series of separations between different social aspects that have to be kept artificially apart, and yet which remain in tension, and can ultimately not be kept apart at all.  In each case what one sees is an initial separation of powers, followed later by the illegitimate capture, in liberal terms, of one power by another, and eventually by a fusion of powers which collapses their separation altogether. At this point, the always lurking oligarchy of liberalism

Liberalism, as Michael Lind has argued, is under attack because it cannot deliver the promised self-correcting markets that provide for free and fair economic competition, political renewal and cultural reconciliation. The malign reality is it consolidates winners, economic monopolies, politically entrenched divides, canyons of class, geography, education and cultural echo chambers where opposition is cancelled.  The remedy is to dismantle concentrations of economic, political and cultural power and challenge meritocratic arguments that help reproduce them. This might involve new anti-trust initiatives, attack on sites of monopoly political power, such as in universities, and confront woke culture In terms of ‘postliberalism’, I get the frustrations with a liberalism conditioned by liberal

If the nightmare of anticommunists during the cold war was an endless future of totalitarian terror, the nightmare of today’s critics of liberalism is an endless future of constant social upheaval and atomisation as a result of unchecked markets and radical individualism. Not a boot stamping on a human face forever, but a high-tech appliance in need of the latest upgrades – forever. What many critics as well as defenders of liberalism tend to overlook is the possibility that liberalism – in the economy, in politics, and in culture – will prove to be unstable and self-liquidating. To put it another way, a liberal social order tends to be an ephemeral transition

The election of Donald Trump and the advance of populism across Europe confirm that we have already entered a postliberal era. Our age marks the end of liberal hegemony that first emerged in the 1960s and 1970s before triumphing after the end of the cold war – the fusion of left-wing social-cultural liberalism with right-wing economic liberalism. Contemporary liberal thought – with its focus on the individual, negative liberty, subjective rights and utility-maximisation – fails to understand the world we live in or the nature of reality. Part of the reason is that much of 20th-century liberalism denies any notion of substantive, transcendent goods in favour of individual rights. Contemporary