Democracy’s Liberalism Problem
its association with a waning meta-ideology
[Readers would undoubtedly be expecting this essay to come down on one side or another of the divides it recognizes, but as a thinker this author has gone beyond any and all recognized divides concerning the governance of society: if curious, “Can’t Get Any Simpler” (a “2 min read” here in Medium; nothing I publish here is behind the paywall.]
Democracy is under threat almost everywhere it exists. The shortcomings of Liberalism are to blame.
Liberalism is the meta-ideology that has spawned narrower political ideologies from libertarianism to conservatism (of a kind) to political liberalism to more (non-Marxist) ‘socialistic’ varieties. As a meta-ideology Liberalism is founded on equality and liberty as the ‘twin pillars of justice’ for a just society. Those various political ideologies emphasize one or the other of those values to varying degrees, but as ideological islands in the Liberal archipelago all of them do recognize both as being necessary for the just governance of society.
Today, Liberalism is foundering. That is weakening all of its political ideologies. At the same time, the political differences contained in emphasizing liberty or equality have made it increasingly difficult to govern Liberal nations via democracy, which is of course the greatest hallmark of Liberalism. Democracy requires compromise, and that has become less and less achievable in recent decades.
Here’s the thing: democracy is itself tied to ‘equality’. Democracy grew slowly within the geopolitical expanse of Liberalism, as one restriction on participation in the political process then another has been removed in one Liberal nation after another: from property to gender to ‘race’/color of skin. The only remaining restriction in all liberal nations is age, which restriction is limited to voting and running for elective offices—with the right to petition the government restricted to being ‘old enough to vote’ (and with being a felon or being too mentally incompetent as restrictions in places).
The ultimate ‘compromise’ that has underlain Liberal governance as democracy became more and more fully realized is that, with equality dominating in the political process, liberty would dominate in the economy. All along, though, political liberals have sought more and more to intervene in economic matters, whether for the benefit of ‘workers’ or ‘the poor’ or, more recently, ‘the environment’.
Political liberals argue that all of those interventions are for the benefit of society as a whole — in large part by making it ‘more just’. For libertarians and conservatives that reflects an arbitrary assertion that equality is superior to liberty as a bulwark for just governance. Of course, for liberals, etc., to accept outcomes for society as a whole from a ‘libertarian’ economy is to arbitrarily promote liberty over equality in the matter of justice.
At the same time, another unresolved issue in Liberalism is secular/ideological vs. sacral/theological. From the very start of Liberalism — John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689) — there has been a comingling of the sacral and the secular in it. Locke had a moral equality among people as a kind of pre-condition for a just society (as the subject of his first Treatise). He got that, explicitly and overtly, from the Bible. In the actual governance of society, however, Locke recognized equality as no more than a constraint on the power ‘rightly’ exercised by property-owning males (in a time and place where it was understood that only Anglo-Saxons would own property, at least in a sufficient amount to allow them to participate in the affairs of governance). The goal of just governance, Locke insisted, was the maximization of liberty, which was a secular thing. It followed, for him, from his conception of the “State of Nature,” in which humans existed as separate and independent beings, without society and its unavoidable strictures.
The founding of the U.S. was the realization of Locke on Earth. The Declaration of Independence of the fledgling nation referred to “self-evident truths,” a “Creator,” ‘equality’, and “liberty” in ways that were as inspiring as they were lacking in intellectual rigor.
The jumbling of secular and sacral, equality and liberty was a conceptual ‘Bishop’s seat’ that would slowly render asunder the Liberal project. Practically, Liberalism has also come up short.
It has failed to eliminate poverty. Any society that fails to provide for the basic material needs of all of its members cannot rightly call itself ‘human’, much less just. Of course, liberals and more socialistic Liberals put the blame for that squarely on ‘the right’, but the point is that the continued existence of poverty is an indictment against Liberalism.
It is a simple fact that Liberals on ‘the left’ have failed to come up with a solution to that problem that would not involve redistribution. Most of them equate redistribution with ‘restitution’, but intellectually that is a difficult case to make. If Locke got one thing completely right, it is that arbitrariness in human relations is injustice, and achieving any kind of redistribution without significant amounts of arbitrariness would be an achievement beyond the most beatific dreams of Solomon.
At this point, ‘left’ Liberals’ still hope to use democracy to ‘make society better’. There are very few ‘right Liberals’ left. Almost all of them have concluded that democracy itself is a problem. Its association with ‘equality’ within Liberalism makes it an inherently ‘leftist’ artefact. At this point, the only use they have for democracy is to win one last victory that they could use to attain power in order to ‘democratically’ ‘de-legitimate’ democracy itself. Elections would probably continue, but with nothing really democratic about them.
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I have developed an economic paradigm that would absolutely, positively eliminate poverty (for all adult citizens — which paradigm could be adopted by any nation) without involving any redistribution of anything. If curious: “A Most Beneficial Economic Change” (another “2 min read” here in Medium with links to more on the topic — again, with nothing behind the paywall).