302. How
illiberal is nationalistic populism?[i]
In item 287
of this blog I discussed what I called ‘The crisis of liberalism’, but there I
considered only one face of liberalism: the libertarian, neo-liberal form, which
I criticized. I neglected what I would call liberal democracy, which I want to
uphold. Liberal democracy entails constitutional constraints on government, in
the rule of law, equality under the law, being innocent until proven guilty,
freedom of speech, of association, and of religion, openness, tolerance, and
separation of powers (legislative, executive, judicial).
The latter does not necessarily include the autonomy of the individual, free trade and laissez faire, with minimal government intervention. In my understanding, those are features added in libertarian liberalism. Neo-liberalism develops this further into a striving for deregulation and liberalization of markets. Libertarians claim that you cannot have the one without the other: no democratic liberalism without free markets. I contest that. I propose that underlying all this are a utility ethics and a preoccupation with only negative freedom, only absence of interference, as discussed previously in this blog.
The distinction between the two liberalisms is important for an adequate understanding of the present populist revolt, on the right and on the left, and an adequate response to it. I think that populism (left and right) has legitimate grievances against libertarianism, whose free market ideology has caused injustice to large segments of the middle and lower classes. The injustice was economic, in the loss of jobs, in globalization, but also ethical, in derision of lower class values and their craving for security and social identity in communities, which were seen as backward, misplaced in present cosmopolitan society. Those people felt loss of recognition, which has been seen, by Hegel, for example, as an existential abyss.
The problem, however, is that the nationalistic populism on the right, in contrast with populism on the left, threatens to become illiberal also in the sense of eroding democratic liberalism, with authoritarian rule, leading to erosion of equality under the law (for women, immigrants, foreigners, transgenders, muslims, and non-white races), freedom and independence of the press and the judiciary, and rights of people who are excluded from ‘the people’ by the mere act of opposing the populist leader. That leader represents the people, so if you do not agree with him you do not belong to the people. We see this happening in Russia, Turkey, with beginnings of it in Hungary, Poland, and forebodings of it in the US, the Netherlands, France, and Germany, among others
What now? I am seeking a way, in this blog and elsewhere, to replace libertarian politics and ‘old economics’ with a new politics and economics that still uphold democratic liberalism. An important element in this is to see the individual not as fully autonomous but as socially constituted. Also, I have pleaded, in this blog, for a shift from utility ethics to a form of virtue ethics, with attention to positive next to negative freedom: not just absence of interference with people striving for the good life, but also enabling them to engage in that striving. A puzzle then is how to include virtues that sustain ‘the good life’ without falling back into old paternalism, maintaining the freedom of choice of what that good life is. I note that liberal democracy, which I want to maintain, already includes virtues such as justice, reasonableness, moderation, tolerance and openness.
I do not have the space here to show what the new economics might be. I will dedicate a number of later items in this blog to that. One of the challenges for a new politics is to ‘bring democracy closer to the people’. I explored that in item 283, proposing to employ new opportunities from internet and social media, dodging their pitfalls and perversities, to go from democracy as a periodic positioning, choosing sides in an election or referendum, to democracy as a process, locally, in communities, with direct involvement of citizens, in the preparation and execution of public policies, in forms of ‘commons’ (such as internet-based communities, joint public-private projects, and citizens forums).
My hope is that with a combination of such new economics and politics we can address the legitimate grievances of populism, and save the basic principles of democratic liberalism.
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