Is Liberalism Really Dead?

Reports of liberalism’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Liberal ideology will continue to limp on for as long as capitalism does.

Philip Pilkington really doesn’t like liberals. I sympathise. Liberals have dominated pretty much every major social institution across the rich world for at least the last 50 years. It is extremely rare to find a media personality, policymaker, or business executive who is not – at their core – a liberal (American readers, I implore you to Google “define:liberalism” before heading straight for the comment section). Living and working among them without sharing their ideas is, as I’m sure Pilkington has experienced, immensely trying.

There is a certain disposition that comes with being a liberal. They tend to be wonkish, hedging their positions on any issue by making a show of consulting ‘both sides of the debate’ – from climate breakdown to the genocide in Gaza. They claim to adhere to a certain moral framework but don’t want to appear too ‘ideological’, so they engage in lots of handwringing and pearl clutching without really saying anything of substance. Above all, they loathe ‘ideologues’, erroneously believing that their own views are based on an objective consultation of the evidence rather than a coherent ideological framework. This oversight is what makes liberals so dangerous – their ideology is hidden and unacknowledged, which means it is hard overtly to challenge.

You might think I’m overstating the hold liberalism has on western elites. The narcissism of small differences means that the pages of our major newspapers are full of liberals griping at one another, but the constant buzz of their minor disputes only underscores the fact that they agree on most things. And the most important thing that they agree on is that things are, by and large, fine. If things aren’t fine, it’s because some bad guy is messing with a system that isn’t broken. Get rid of the bad guy, restore normality; hence the liberal refrain “make politics boring again”.

I would argue that liberalism is an ideology that can be boiled down to apologism for the capitalist status quo. This definition of liberalism allows us to understand why liberals refuse to stand up for anything that isn’t already largely accepted in mainstream circles: their ideology is rooted in a desire to legitimise what already exists – namely, capitalist social relations.

We are Living in a Material World

Pilkington’s disdain for liberalism made him something of a star on the left, after one of his appearances on Novara Media went viral. In this thoughtful interview, Pilkington – a policy wonk whose interests straddle macroeconomics and geopolitics – argues that the global liberal order is collapsing, with the Ukraine and Gaza wars harbingers of a more fundamental shift. The authority, and economic dominance, of the west is collapsing, with far reaching implications for the operation of global capitalism.

In The Collapse of Global Liberalism, Philip Pilkington attempts to base this argument upon philosophical foundations. He argues that liberalism, an ideology which has dominated our politics for at least the last century, is collapsing. He defines liberalism as a project that seeks to undermine traditional hierarchies. Liberals assert that human beings are fundamentally equal, and that the market is both the most rational and efficient method for governing a society composed of equal individuals. Markets are mediated by contracts, which replace force or loyalty as the foundation for economic relationships, and take on a sacrosanct role in liberal philosophy – hence the liberal obsession with social contract theory.

He also makes the unusual, though understandable, argument that neither Marxism nor neoliberalism represent a fundamental break with liberalism. Instead, Marxism represents the extension of the liberal focus on equality into the realm of the economy (a definition I largely agree with). Neoliberalism is merely a sharpening of the commitment to market ideology (though, as I show in VC, it actually undermines free markets themselves in favour of monopoly power and public-private cooperation). And fascism represents an attempt to restore traditional forms of authority undermined by liberal ideas through force.

The liberal disdain for hierarchy makes it an extremist ideology, according to Pilkington. He laments the demise of traditional hierarchies, like the family, and belief systems, like religion – not, I think, because he is particularly committed to either, but because he senses that these frameworks provided some order and stability to peoples’ thinking and relationships. In this sense, his perspective is rooted in the Conservative tradition – from Aristotle’s defence of social hierarchy, to Burke’s suspicion of the radical changes fomented by the application of liberal ideas during the French Revolution.

You don’t see many genuine Conservatives knocking around these days, and in that sense his perspective is interesting and somewhat unique. But I disagree with his definition of liberalism. I believe he is too generous to liberal ideology in blaming it for social transformations like the demise of the traditional family and religion. Liberalism is, at its core, an ideology that emerged, post-hoc, to defend capitalist social relations. And the blame for the changes Pilkington laments lies with capital alone.

The Market Society

The root of my disagreement with Pilkington stems from our differing modes of analysis. Pilkington explicitly labels himself a Hegelian – in other words, an idealist. I’m using the term ‘idealist’ here in its philosophical sense – i.e. someone who believes that history is a great battle between different ideas. It is ironic that Pilkington adopts this position in a book castigating liberalism, because idealism is the bedrock of liberal philosophy. The belief that history progresses through a great battle between competing ideas, and therefore we can change history by changing the things we believe, is the sine qua non of liberalism.

The major philosophical alternative to idealism is materialism – the belief that history is shaped by relations of production, with ideas emerging from the way a society produces resources. This is, of course, the perspective adopted by Marx as laid out in The German Ideology, which critiques Hegel and his followers in even harsher terms than Pilkington critiques liberals. In exposing the operation of the capitalist system and its influence on prevailing orthodoxies, the materialist perspective is a direct attack on liberalism.

Marx points out that the favourable view of capitalism held by theorists such as Adam Smith is rooted in an analysis of capitalist exchange – i.e. markets. Smith’s philosophical framework, as Pilkington rightly argues, provides an ethical and rational foundation for the application of market principles to an entire society. This market-based ethics remains central to liberal political theory. Pilkington rightly argues that “liberal economics is not a supplement to the liberal project, but rather a core part of its essence.”

But Marx showed that to truly understand capitalism we need to leave the realm of exchange and enter the “hidden abode of production”. There, in the factory and the sweat shop, we find the same relationships of domination and control that liberals claim to abhor. We also find fundamental irrationalities that result in periods of chronic overproduction that lead to deep crises. In other words, when you look at capitalist production, you can see that this is a system that is neither ethical, nor rational.

Liberalism as an ideology is an attempt to obscure the amorality and irrationality of capitalism as a social system. Smith, Locke, Mill, Ricardo, Rawls, and many others each seek to justify either an emerging, or an established, capitalist status quo. They do so by appealing to the logic of the market, as both a system of ethics and economics. Markets are, in this view, the best way to promote meritocracy, undermine illegitimate hierarchies, and ensure the most efficient allocation of resources.

But, as I show in my most recent book, Vulture Capitalism, capitalism is not a free market system. First, there is no form of capitalism that has not been based on extensive monopoly power – from the East India Company, to the oil trusts, to the Magnificent 7. Second, there is no form of capitalism that has not involved extensive state support for these monopolies – and corporate support for capitalist states. Finally, there is no form of capitalism that has not involved extensive collaboration and cooperation among and between corporate and financial monopolies on the one hand, and capitalist states on the other.

The commanding heights of a capitalist economy are not organised according to market principles. Market ideology (i.e. liberalism) is, however, critically important to the operation of capitalism, as it serves to legitimise the inequalities generated by capitalist economies. The wealthy and powerful, on this view, achieve success because they are more talented, more productive, and more hard working than everyone else – as revealed by the market. The poor, on the other hand, are simply failures. Depending on your interpretation of liberal theory, they either deserve destitution, or they simply need to be saved by public or private benevolence.

Capitalism vs conservativism

The materialist view is that relations of production are much more important in shaping the development of society than are ideas. In fact, materialists believe that ideas flow from the relations of production – in this case, the reason liberalism is so popular is that it serves to legitimise the capitalist mode of production. But what of Pilkington’s discussion of the social problems caused by ‘liberal ideology’ – like the decline of the family and traditional gender roles?

It seems obvious that these changes stemmed not from a sudden transformation in the way people think, but from a much more profound and fundamental transformation in the way our societies produce things. Take the family. Capitalist social relations have always depended upon the provision of extensive domestic labour by women. Women have been forced to engage in what Marxist feminists call ‘social reproduction’ to support the maintenance and expansion of the workforce. The bourgeois family is, as many theorists have pointed out, the foundational economic unit of capitalist production.

But, as it is wont to do, capitalism cannibalizes the foundations of its own success. Providing women with greater economic freedom has created both new consumer markets, and new sources of labour to exploit – both huge opportunities for capital. But divorce rates have risen, and fertility rates have fallen as more women have entered the workforce. Many women – particularly working-class women – have been forced to enter the workforce as costs have risen (e.g. rent, childcare) and wages have stagnated. Others have chosen to structure their identities around work as they have come to accept the competitive, individualistic logic of the market society (see, e.g., the “girl boss”). As a result, we are living through a crisis of social reproduction.

Many of the other issues Pilkington laments can be ascribed to the totalising tendencies of capital, which seeks to subject all areas of social life to its will. If there is an opportunity for profit, or for exploitation, then it will be taken in a capitalist economy. No cherished beliefs, no cultural norms, no ideological commitments will be allowed to stand in the way of the ceaseless drive towards growth.

This is, of course, the incongruity of the conservative commitment to capitalism – typified by the clear preference Pilkington shows for the continuation of this economic system. As traditional conservatives discovered throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries, capitalism destroys the foundations upon which their ideology is based – from religion, to the family, to cultural homogeneity. These changes cannot be reversed once they have become embedded. As Pilkington rightly points out, the attempt to do so has only ever been achieved fleetingly through violence, in the form of fascism.

While reading Pilkington’s book, I was reminded of Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Both Pilkington and Schumpeter had clearly read Marx closely. While neither agree with his perspective, they take his views – and his critique of capitalism – seriously. Schumpeter was so convinced of Marx’s arguments that he believed, wrongly, that capitalism was destined to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. I think Pilkington has made the same mistake with liberalism. For as long as capitalism continues to exist, liberalism will limp on, forever metastasizing to justify the maintenance of the status quo.