The only thing worse than liberalism is everything else

There is a lot of talk about the future of liberalism these days — and it doesn’t look bright.

In Waleed Aly’s latest Quarterly Essay, he describes a liberalism under siege from all sides. The populist right is railing against “woke” culture, immigration, and a cultural elite that seems hellbent on destroying traditional culture, communities and religion. Meanwhile, the progressive left has turned its back on liberal values of tolerance, civility and free speech in its quest to enforce moral purity. 

Both have their political manifestations, but the populist right, in particular, is looking ascendent in many liberal democracies, including right here.

Now, I’m as critical of liberalism as the next (small “l”) liberal. Liberalism’s core focus on the individual as the moral atom of society downplays our nature as social creatures that yearn to belong to something greater than ourselves. Immigration and multiculturalism can leave people feeling unsettled, as their community changes too quickly for them to keep up. The “marketplace of ideas” is undoubtedly a myth that leaves minority voices unheard. And while neoliberalism has unlocked the potential of capital, it has come at the expense of workers.

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But, for all its flaws, the prospect of a so-called “post-liberal” world terrifies me — and it should terrify liberals and post-liberals alike. Let’s not get distracted by the prefix; just because an ideology comes after liberalism doesn’t mean it will be progressive in terms of human welfare. Indeed, a post-liberal world would likely look a lot like a pre-liberal one — and that would be disastrous for humanity.

In most societies that have ever existed (and most that exist today outside the liberal democratic West), power has been wielded not by individuals, but rather by a small, powerful elite — whether chiefs or priests, an oligarchic elite or a military junta. Individuals didn’t get to choose how to live, and had their culture, religion and political views thrust upon them. 

That culture was usually structured to benefit the elites while oppressing the majority. Even people’s jobs were often forced upon them. They did what their family did, or what the elites told them to do, whether they liked it — or were good at it — or not. None of this ikigai claptrap. And if they didn’t like the system, there was little recourse to change it. There was no rule of law; there was just the rule of the powerful over the weak.

Throughout all this, pre-liberal societies faced an ever-present threat of invasion or exploitation by more powerful foreign forces. Forget tariffs and trade wars; it was invasion and colonial exploitation that worried them. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is so shocking to many of us because we believed such things were in the past. But, in fact, they were the historical norm prior to World War II.

Remember, for most of history, violence was a much more common cause of death. The fact that diseases of old age, like dementia and heart disease, are the biggest killers today is a testament to the peace we have wrought from an often hostile and volatile world.

All this might seem apocalyptic. But societies tend to find an equilibrium over time, mostly determined by where power sits. And if power rests with the elites, then they will work to entrench it, making it almost impossible for the people to wrest it back. They take control of the media, build up their secret police, stack the courts with their lackeys and crack down — often violently — on anyone challenging their authority.

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It was only through a sequence of historically improbable events and shockingly bloody conflicts, like the Thirty Years’ War in the seventeenth century, that liberalism was able to emerge and put power in the hands of the people. If it goes back to the elites, and liberal institutions collapse, then it’s not trivial to return it to the people — or at least not without more shockingly bloody wars.

Those voting for populist-right parties, who are tired of democracy and want a strong leader to take charge, who want their culture or moral worldview to be dominant, need to be careful what they wish for. If they’re successful, their tribe might be in charge for a while. But if liberal norms erode and their tribe loses power, or a strongman (it’s usually a man) takes over, they might soon become the oppressed. Exhibit A would be Russia throughout most of the past 100 years.

If, like me, you’re worried about a Trump- or Orbán-like slide into post-liberalism, then we need to do more to remedy liberalism’s flaws, and to remind people of what they stand to lose if they pivot away from it. That means listening to and acknowledging the grievances that people have with the current liberal order, and mitigating some of its flaws. It means resisting the pull of the hard left and right, and voting for parties that look to reform and reinforce our institutions instead of dismantling them. And it means reminding ourselves, and others, that giving in to our (often justified) grievances risks compromising the least-worst political system we have ever known.

Liberalism can be a hard sell. It’s often too abstract, too boring, and its flaws too visible. But we need to remind people why it’s far superior to the alternatives — and make clear what those alternatives really are. We need to do the unsexy work of making liberalism sexy again.