The main staple of liberalism is the idea that liberalism has moral superiority above everything else and thus considering its mostly hypocritical and abstract values as universal and superior, i.e. not only the right and legitimacy to decide what is ‘true’, but anything that does not fit the limited bourgeois political and ideological framework is automatically subjected to some sort of vile and hypocritical smear campaigns to discredit anybody who does not toe the line. The self awarded and envisioned moral superiority of liberals allows them to specify the levels of tolerance, even up to the point to decide that liberal intolerance of dissent is some form of tolerance. It is the perverted logic of opportunism and superiority. Opportunism and hypocrisy are the centers of gravity of bourgeois liberalism, while liberalism reserves the authority based on assumed moral superiority to shape society. It’s closest bedfellow is fascism. Marx also presciently described these capitalist accommodationists when he diagnosed the essence of petty-bourgeois sophistry in his critique of anarchism, which merges with liberal ideology on essential points…..’the petty bourgeois is made up of on-the-one-hand and on-the-other-hand. This is so in his economic interests and therefore in his politics, religious, scientific and artistic views. And likewise in his morals, in everything. He is a living contradiction…’ That perfectly applies to the western liberal upper middle class - the epitome of opportunism. Always acting like on the one hand and on the other hand but always on the side of power. It is a permanent autocratic wagging the finger to repressively guide others within the self prescribed sphere of liberalism. Western Liberalism historically has produced violent imperialism, since liberalism is based on the cynical and false belief that hypocritical western values are superior and universal and thus need to be spread across the globe and imposed on non western peoples - politically, culturally, economically and militarily - by any means necessary utilizing oppressive and violent approaches. Liberalism is the worst disease ever proliferating among human societies - it has been causing endless wars, exploitation, colonialism and inhumanity in its smug entitlement of superiority and domination. Liberalism is deeply fascist in its essence and close to the Nazi ideology of the theory of the master race - it did not need to adopt it - it has the same agenda since the belief in white supremacy is part of its core without explicitly stating it. There was a reason why bourgeois liberalism gave rise to Hitler. Liberalism is an elitist bourgeois ideology of a privileged strata of people and there is vast historical evidence of relentlessly and endlessly asserting its so called values on a global scale by all kinds of violent measures. While capitalism is incompatible with democracy liberalism is not - it is the perfect political fit for predatory neoliberalism. The measuring stick of western liberal societies is unfettered individualism, i. e. individual freedom - what’s good for me is good, what’s good for society does not count. That principle is perversly equated with civil liberties, democracy and freedom.
The message in liberal democracy is to keep the status quo and don't talk seriously about the ideals of the french revolution, which were liberty, justice and equality. The only thing that came to pass in some limited form is the political freedom of speech and the perverted joke of what they call personal freedom. What good is freedom of speech if no one is going to listen because the ordinary citizen does not have a platform and their so called elected repesentatives are totally disconnected. Freedom of speech is a travesty at best. It is like talking in a soundproof cell.
On top of that, social and economical justice and equality are something we only can dream about in western liberal societies. We are no further with real democracy than more than two centuries ago. Other than the Paris Commune in 1871 and the Bolsheviks under Lenin in the early days of October 1917 no one ever politically, socially and economically tried to realize the goals of the french revolution. Political liberalism based on the enlightenment is a bourgeois elitist trap to lure people into the illusion of freedom and democracy.
Your definition of "liberalism" seems to differ from mine. I think Mill's "On Liberty," which defends intellectual pluralism and the right to be wrong, is the classic statement of liberalism. Although I agree that many who call themselves liberals today seemto have lost trust in democracy.
Is there not a confusion between a “liberal society” and a “democratic society” here? You can read what you want if a society is sufficiently liberal; whether it is democratic or not.
I think democracy has made more difference than this article perhaps concedes. Liberalism hasn’t always been democratic. In the UK (where I live) there were liberal representative institutions long before the franchise was anything like inclusive. Anyone apart from colonial subjects could access and write almost anything if they could afford it. Intellectual refugees like Karl Marx sought refuge here.
It's hard to imagine how social democracy and it’s welfare projects could have succeeded politically without a democratic franchise. As a result almost everyone felt they benefitted from the political status quo and that traditional class barriers had been greatly reduced. It could be afforded because of the overwhelming economic and political advantages enjoyed by Western countries. In other parts of the world it couldn’t.
The crisis in liberalism has followed the crisis in social democracy. Welfare has been cut even as inequality increased. Many people are insecure and feel that the current apparent priorities of liberalism will not address their problems. They are ready to consider alternatives, some of them very nasty, and there are ambitious politicians prepared to exploit this.
It seems that the liberals limit the freedom of expression and thinking in the most illiberal way nowadays. See for example Germany where those who think Palestinians should not be killed are kicked out from their jobs, and Britain where even asking questions about a construction project in a letter may land you with huge fines, see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/02/plutocrats-powerful-laws-uk-rich-corporations.
So the differences that may have existed between liberal states and authoritarian states are shrinking. Probably because the liberal project in itself is so politically illiberal. It was, remember, introduced in Chile by a violent military dictatorship, and if the opposition to it increase in its core countries I don't doubt they will take recourse to the same kind of violence. The liberal project is about creating a monopoly of power for a wealthy elite to use the goods of the world as they like, as George Monbiot says in the link above, and the rest will not feel happy about that. For that reason they will have to be silenced.
I agree with Branko that the liberal project and the communist project have much in common. Both believe "science" says that they are right and what people in general think is not important. Both believe they are entitled to power because of their sublime insights in the working of nature. This in sharp contrast to traditional 20th century liberalism, or social democracy for that matter.
I think democracy can have an impact on a social level - for example, by ensuring peaceful transfers of power, it can help address the instability many other sorts of regimes encounter when it comes to successions. In addition, it should in theory support better decision-making insofar as various voices can make themselves heard and it’s more difficult for elites to simply drive favoured policies through
When I thought of that, my answer was: the freedom to read and listen to whatever I want, and to say whatever I want.
I'd say it no longer holds true, meaning these days in modern dictatorships you would be able to say pretty much whatever you want. There is a mechanism that allows to marginalize you and ignore you, which is exactly the same as in modern democracies, ironically. Internet allowed for very efficient informational tribalization, where people of the same opinions form their own cosy bubbles. This is what is happening in liberal democracies, and the same is happening in dictatorships, to utmost delight of power holders in both. Divide et empera in automatic mode.
The contrast between “institutions” and “comprehensive outcomes” applies equally to “free speech”. If we view “freedom of speech” narrowly only institutional terms, it doesn’t matter that half the population in society is uneducated or too burdened with poverty to have any real opportunity to have a say in social choice. All the elites care about is whether they are free to express their views on newspaper columns free of restrictions, no matter how prejudicial their views are.
But a comprehensive understanding of free speech involves ensuring that all members of society have minimal education, employment opportunities, public health, so everyone have a genuine opportunity to engage in public discussion.
It is more important for the society to be allowed to speak at work, not in internet. First, nobody cares what other people write in internet. Everyone cares about his own oppinion, which does not reach broad public. Second, internet is used for data mining and designing data based political parties. Data driven political parties are not the ones that must listen you in internet. Instead your co-workers, co-students but mostly your boss should listen. I will tell you why. Because the socialists in the 30's didnt rely a lot on newspapers and media, but they used social pressure. No social pressure can happen in internet, but it will be a different story if 10 co-workers or 20 football players, or entire nation stops greeting you or looks at you badly, because you are supporting capitalist slavery and inequality. The society has more power out of internet. Being attacked in internet is not the same as being kicked out of a bar. And using internet to conduct attack on the big capitalists doesnt have the same effect as mild social pressure on the workers of the big capitalists by some self-proclaimed neo-unions.
At risk of dissent, I have to say that I read your article as expressing an elitist point of view.
Only when you know yourself to be in an unassailable station in life, such as is provided by wealth (à la Elon Musk), political clout (Ted Cruz-like), or academic tenure, you would think that the only thing we should be concerned with is freedom of speech.
Don't get me wrong, freedom of speech is crucial, and I agree with your take that it should be absolute, whatever the cost, but the important point is that for those of us further down the social scale the simple consideration of how to sustain oneself and one's family is just as crucial.
And in that regards, there's no comparison between a democratic, free-market society, and an authoritarian one. And pardon my conflating democracy and free market, but it happens that when you see things from below, you realize that the latter is part and parcel of a true democratic society.
I say this as someone who lived for decades in an authoritarian-leaning society, and learned from early age that as the ruling party controls everything (either by direct ownership as in Cuba or by indirect controls such as in Russia today) your chances of getting a decent job, choosing your career (e.g. being able to pursue a university career), or even securing a place to live with minimal health standards, depends on your parents, your siblings and yourself, of course, following the party line and abstaining of any dissenting opinion.
In a free-market and democratic society you might lose your job if the company's owner doesn't like your ideas, but you have a chance at getting a job in other companies where they don't care about your ideas, or maybe they even share those (just ask the few lads who lost their jobs after marching to the tune of "Jews won't replace us!" In Charlotesville in 2017- all of them got some other employment afterwards).
So, it's not just the liberty to think and say whatever one chooses to believe, but the liberty to pursue one's sustainment.
To quote Locke: "Life, Freedom, and Property", or as the US Consitution put it: "Life, Freedom and the Pursuit of Happiness".
That's something that no authoritarian regime can provide.
“I write this as somebody who believes in Enlightenment (...)”
Then you're in the dwindling minority in the West, even if we only take into account the educated middle class, because the West has already abandoned Enlightenment in philosophy at least 50 years ago (with the rise of Structuralism in France). Economy -- ironically, your area, which you swear is a direct descendant of Enlightenment -- was one of the first areas of the Humanities to abandon the Enlightenment tradition (because of Marx, the last inheritor of Enlightenment): all of the Neoclassical tradition arose outside of the main Enlightenment line, instead descended from what Marx called “vulgar economy” (in opposition to its enlightened brother, Political Economy).
Ironically, you may be one of the last believers in Enlightenment because you came from a socialist country, because Marxism became the last Enlightenment tradition alive in the West after WWII. But, in the capitalist portion of the globe, Enlightenment was already dead by the 1970s (earlier, depending on the specific area of the Humanities you are talking about).
--//--
The materialist explanation of the cult of “democracy” in the West since WWII.
The logical, enlightened, conclusion of Political Economy (David Ricardo) and Idealist Philosophy (Hegel) was the communist revolution, as was demonstrated by Marx. But since capitalism had not exhausted its possibilities yet (Marx died in the apex of capitalism), the practical solution was to simply abandon Enlightenment and go with what I will call here “vulgar” sciences. The Austrian School was the first openly vulgar line of economy to be anti-Marx, and Philosophy had to bury Hegel (“like a dead dog”) and revive the corpse of Kant (Neokantism), thus devolving into a glorified “science” of (anticommunist) morality and ethics after WWII. Whatever was left out of morality and ethics was subdivided into many other new human sciences (Sociology, International Relations, Political Science, Cultural, Postcolonial and Gender Studies, (neo)Psychology, (the rehabilitation of) Anthropology, Kreminology, Pekinology, etc. etc.).
But how was this executed? The answer, at least for the postwar since, is very clear: the rise of the middle class. Originally (19th Century), the middle class was just some very well educated bureaucrats of the colonial empires: governors, administrator, physicians and teachers who were sent to the colonies in order to consolidate them for their metropolises. They were truly elite, because they were very few relatively and absolutely in terms of population; what we nowadays call the “experts” (people with Ph.Ds who know a lot and are authorities about some subject) was not really a thing: they were usually the sons of the nobility who went to Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Yale et al for pure and simple pleasure of knowledge and erudition.
After WWII, in order to compete ideologically with socialism (which they called, in the West, erroneously, “communism” -- already here a sign of rising anti-enlightenment ignorance), the capitalist elites had to appease the people without hurting the system, and the solution was an unprecedented expansion of the middle class. This expansion included the universities, where ideology ended up being produced -- both for practical (the system became too big to be administered by amateurs from the capitalist elite) and ideological reasons (universalization of the the capitalist ideal).
As a result, the production of ideology -- here in this post called the “freedom to be wrong” -- was transferred from the very top of the elite to a new, universalized, middle class: a scheme that still stands today.
That is a trite comment without the provision of better alternatives . Freedom to be right and wrong is the liberal democracy aim, without the consequences of being defenestrated poisoned or jailed for your views. You can always chose to live in China or Russia if you feel that this is it good enough for you
This sounds attractive at first sight. But there is a qualitative difference between a system in which one can have a different opinion, but not enforce it on others, and one in which difference of opinion is brutally repressed. Of course, ultimately the first system will have to repress those who seek to repress all difference, in order to ensure its own existence. But not allowing itself to be swallowed by the intolerant is not the same as being intolerant. One is of course entitled to cry foul when their intolerance is not allowed to prevail - this is precisely part of liberalism. But try crying foul, or claiming the right to be wrong, in one of your morally equivalent illiberal states and see how long it takes before you are disappeared. That this is a paradox is not a novel point, as you know - it's Polanyi's famous paradox of tolerance. But the fact that it's paradoxical doesn't mean that there is no morally significant distinction between being tolerant of difference while repressing intolerant movements and being intolerant.
Well said. Kind of discouraging to even have to be defending the right to free speech, now, given the amazing world it has helped build in the last few centuries. A healthy humanity needs a diversity in thought just like it needs a diversity in the gene pool. Hopefully not too big a tangent here, but this need for real diversity is one of the biggest advantages of humanity becoming multiplanetary…ie in the 17th century puritans emigrating to future Massachusetts was an option. Hopefully in the 21st century plus, Mars etc become similar outlets for new ideas and societies…like the frontier North America became such a healthy influence on Europe in the recent past.
>When I thought of that, my answer was: the freedom to read and listen to whatever I want, and to say whatever I want. And I think this is all.
Disagree. It's to live the way I want that is derived from the free speech and therefore to have happier life. And for the political groups i.e. nations to have their governance based on public discourse that should spring a degree but nor full public resolution and acceptance based on available information. Defo it's now harder to do in the "global village" world, but it does not mean it's wrong.
Not all the nations have a luxury to speak like Americans or Western Europeans, demagoguing about fallacy of liberalism while some of other nations are literally bleed out defending that way to live that taken for granted among "westerners".
The main staple of liberalism is the idea that liberalism has moral superiority above everything else and thus considering its mostly hypocritical and abstract values as universal and superior, i.e. not only the right and legitimacy to decide what is ‘true’, but anything that does not fit the limited bourgeois political and ideological framework is automatically subjected to some sort of vile and hypocritical smear campaigns to discredit anybody who does not toe the line. The self awarded and envisioned moral superiority of liberals allows them to specify the levels of tolerance, even up to the point to decide that liberal intolerance of dissent is some form of tolerance. It is the perverted logic of opportunism and superiority. Opportunism and hypocrisy are the centers of gravity of bourgeois liberalism, while liberalism reserves the authority based on assumed moral superiority to shape society. It’s closest bedfellow is fascism. Marx also presciently described these capitalist accommodationists when he diagnosed the essence of petty-bourgeois sophistry in his critique of anarchism, which merges with liberal ideology on essential points…..’the petty bourgeois is made up of on-the-one-hand and on-the-other-hand. This is so in his economic interests and therefore in his politics, religious, scientific and artistic views. And likewise in his morals, in everything. He is a living contradiction…’ That perfectly applies to the western liberal upper middle class - the epitome of opportunism. Always acting like on the one hand and on the other hand but always on the side of power. It is a permanent autocratic wagging the finger to repressively guide others within the self prescribed sphere of liberalism. Western Liberalism historically has produced violent imperialism, since liberalism is based on the cynical and false belief that hypocritical western values are superior and universal and thus need to be spread across the globe and imposed on non western peoples - politically, culturally, economically and militarily - by any means necessary utilizing oppressive and violent approaches. Liberalism is the worst disease ever proliferating among human societies - it has been causing endless wars, exploitation, colonialism and inhumanity in its smug entitlement of superiority and domination. Liberalism is deeply fascist in its essence and close to the Nazi ideology of the theory of the master race - it did not need to adopt it - it has the same agenda since the belief in white supremacy is part of its core without explicitly stating it. There was a reason why bourgeois liberalism gave rise to Hitler. Liberalism is an elitist bourgeois ideology of a privileged strata of people and there is vast historical evidence of relentlessly and endlessly asserting its so called values on a global scale by all kinds of violent measures. While capitalism is incompatible with democracy liberalism is not - it is the perfect political fit for predatory neoliberalism. The measuring stick of western liberal societies is unfettered individualism, i. e. individual freedom - what’s good for me is good, what’s good for society does not count. That principle is perversly equated with civil liberties, democracy and freedom.
The message in liberal democracy is to keep the status quo and don't talk seriously about the ideals of the french revolution, which were liberty, justice and equality. The only thing that came to pass in some limited form is the political freedom of speech and the perverted joke of what they call personal freedom. What good is freedom of speech if no one is going to listen because the ordinary citizen does not have a platform and their so called elected repesentatives are totally disconnected. Freedom of speech is a travesty at best. It is like talking in a soundproof cell.
On top of that, social and economical justice and equality are something we only can dream about in western liberal societies. We are no further with real democracy than more than two centuries ago. Other than the Paris Commune in 1871 and the Bolsheviks under Lenin in the early days of October 1917 no one ever politically, socially and economically tried to realize the goals of the french revolution. Political liberalism based on the enlightenment is a bourgeois elitist trap to lure people into the illusion of freedom and democracy.
Your definition of "liberalism" seems to differ from mine. I think Mill's "On Liberty," which defends intellectual pluralism and the right to be wrong, is the classic statement of liberalism. Although I agree that many who call themselves liberals today seemto have lost trust in democracy.
Is there not a confusion between a “liberal society” and a “democratic society” here? You can read what you want if a society is sufficiently liberal; whether it is democratic or not.
I think democracy has made more difference than this article perhaps concedes. Liberalism hasn’t always been democratic. In the UK (where I live) there were liberal representative institutions long before the franchise was anything like inclusive. Anyone apart from colonial subjects could access and write almost anything if they could afford it. Intellectual refugees like Karl Marx sought refuge here.
It's hard to imagine how social democracy and it’s welfare projects could have succeeded politically without a democratic franchise. As a result almost everyone felt they benefitted from the political status quo and that traditional class barriers had been greatly reduced. It could be afforded because of the overwhelming economic and political advantages enjoyed by Western countries. In other parts of the world it couldn’t.
The crisis in liberalism has followed the crisis in social democracy. Welfare has been cut even as inequality increased. Many people are insecure and feel that the current apparent priorities of liberalism will not address their problems. They are ready to consider alternatives, some of them very nasty, and there are ambitious politicians prepared to exploit this.
It seems that the liberals limit the freedom of expression and thinking in the most illiberal way nowadays. See for example Germany where those who think Palestinians should not be killed are kicked out from their jobs, and Britain where even asking questions about a construction project in a letter may land you with huge fines, see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/02/plutocrats-powerful-laws-uk-rich-corporations.
So the differences that may have existed between liberal states and authoritarian states are shrinking. Probably because the liberal project in itself is so politically illiberal. It was, remember, introduced in Chile by a violent military dictatorship, and if the opposition to it increase in its core countries I don't doubt they will take recourse to the same kind of violence. The liberal project is about creating a monopoly of power for a wealthy elite to use the goods of the world as they like, as George Monbiot says in the link above, and the rest will not feel happy about that. For that reason they will have to be silenced.
I agree with Branko that the liberal project and the communist project have much in common. Both believe "science" says that they are right and what people in general think is not important. Both believe they are entitled to power because of their sublime insights in the working of nature. This in sharp contrast to traditional 20th century liberalism, or social democracy for that matter.
I think democracy can have an impact on a social level - for example, by ensuring peaceful transfers of power, it can help address the instability many other sorts of regimes encounter when it comes to successions. In addition, it should in theory support better decision-making insofar as various voices can make themselves heard and it’s more difficult for elites to simply drive favoured policies through
When I thought of that, my answer was: the freedom to read and listen to whatever I want, and to say whatever I want.
I'd say it no longer holds true, meaning these days in modern dictatorships you would be able to say pretty much whatever you want. There is a mechanism that allows to marginalize you and ignore you, which is exactly the same as in modern democracies, ironically. Internet allowed for very efficient informational tribalization, where people of the same opinions form their own cosy bubbles. This is what is happening in liberal democracies, and the same is happening in dictatorships, to utmost delight of power holders in both. Divide et empera in automatic mode.
The contrast between “institutions” and “comprehensive outcomes” applies equally to “free speech”. If we view “freedom of speech” narrowly only institutional terms, it doesn’t matter that half the population in society is uneducated or too burdened with poverty to have any real opportunity to have a say in social choice. All the elites care about is whether they are free to express their views on newspaper columns free of restrictions, no matter how prejudicial their views are.
But a comprehensive understanding of free speech involves ensuring that all members of society have minimal education, employment opportunities, public health, so everyone have a genuine opportunity to engage in public discussion.
China just has a broader understanding of democracy than “liberal democracy” which prioritises “democratic institutions” over “democratic outcomes”.
It is more important for the society to be allowed to speak at work, not in internet. First, nobody cares what other people write in internet. Everyone cares about his own oppinion, which does not reach broad public. Second, internet is used for data mining and designing data based political parties. Data driven political parties are not the ones that must listen you in internet. Instead your co-workers, co-students but mostly your boss should listen. I will tell you why. Because the socialists in the 30's didnt rely a lot on newspapers and media, but they used social pressure. No social pressure can happen in internet, but it will be a different story if 10 co-workers or 20 football players, or entire nation stops greeting you or looks at you badly, because you are supporting capitalist slavery and inequality. The society has more power out of internet. Being attacked in internet is not the same as being kicked out of a bar. And using internet to conduct attack on the big capitalists doesnt have the same effect as mild social pressure on the workers of the big capitalists by some self-proclaimed neo-unions.
At risk of dissent, I have to say that I read your article as expressing an elitist point of view.
Only when you know yourself to be in an unassailable station in life, such as is provided by wealth (à la Elon Musk), political clout (Ted Cruz-like), or academic tenure, you would think that the only thing we should be concerned with is freedom of speech.
Don't get me wrong, freedom of speech is crucial, and I agree with your take that it should be absolute, whatever the cost, but the important point is that for those of us further down the social scale the simple consideration of how to sustain oneself and one's family is just as crucial.
And in that regards, there's no comparison between a democratic, free-market society, and an authoritarian one. And pardon my conflating democracy and free market, but it happens that when you see things from below, you realize that the latter is part and parcel of a true democratic society.
I say this as someone who lived for decades in an authoritarian-leaning society, and learned from early age that as the ruling party controls everything (either by direct ownership as in Cuba or by indirect controls such as in Russia today) your chances of getting a decent job, choosing your career (e.g. being able to pursue a university career), or even securing a place to live with minimal health standards, depends on your parents, your siblings and yourself, of course, following the party line and abstaining of any dissenting opinion.
In a free-market and democratic society you might lose your job if the company's owner doesn't like your ideas, but you have a chance at getting a job in other companies where they don't care about your ideas, or maybe they even share those (just ask the few lads who lost their jobs after marching to the tune of "Jews won't replace us!" In Charlotesville in 2017- all of them got some other employment afterwards).
So, it's not just the liberty to think and say whatever one chooses to believe, but the liberty to pursue one's sustainment.
To quote Locke: "Life, Freedom, and Property", or as the US Consitution put it: "Life, Freedom and the Pursuit of Happiness".
That's something that no authoritarian regime can provide.
“I write this as somebody who believes in Enlightenment (...)”
Then you're in the dwindling minority in the West, even if we only take into account the educated middle class, because the West has already abandoned Enlightenment in philosophy at least 50 years ago (with the rise of Structuralism in France). Economy -- ironically, your area, which you swear is a direct descendant of Enlightenment -- was one of the first areas of the Humanities to abandon the Enlightenment tradition (because of Marx, the last inheritor of Enlightenment): all of the Neoclassical tradition arose outside of the main Enlightenment line, instead descended from what Marx called “vulgar economy” (in opposition to its enlightened brother, Political Economy).
Ironically, you may be one of the last believers in Enlightenment because you came from a socialist country, because Marxism became the last Enlightenment tradition alive in the West after WWII. But, in the capitalist portion of the globe, Enlightenment was already dead by the 1970s (earlier, depending on the specific area of the Humanities you are talking about).
--//--
The materialist explanation of the cult of “democracy” in the West since WWII.
The logical, enlightened, conclusion of Political Economy (David Ricardo) and Idealist Philosophy (Hegel) was the communist revolution, as was demonstrated by Marx. But since capitalism had not exhausted its possibilities yet (Marx died in the apex of capitalism), the practical solution was to simply abandon Enlightenment and go with what I will call here “vulgar” sciences. The Austrian School was the first openly vulgar line of economy to be anti-Marx, and Philosophy had to bury Hegel (“like a dead dog”) and revive the corpse of Kant (Neokantism), thus devolving into a glorified “science” of (anticommunist) morality and ethics after WWII. Whatever was left out of morality and ethics was subdivided into many other new human sciences (Sociology, International Relations, Political Science, Cultural, Postcolonial and Gender Studies, (neo)Psychology, (the rehabilitation of) Anthropology, Kreminology, Pekinology, etc. etc.).
But how was this executed? The answer, at least for the postwar since, is very clear: the rise of the middle class. Originally (19th Century), the middle class was just some very well educated bureaucrats of the colonial empires: governors, administrator, physicians and teachers who were sent to the colonies in order to consolidate them for their metropolises. They were truly elite, because they were very few relatively and absolutely in terms of population; what we nowadays call the “experts” (people with Ph.Ds who know a lot and are authorities about some subject) was not really a thing: they were usually the sons of the nobility who went to Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Yale et al for pure and simple pleasure of knowledge and erudition.
After WWII, in order to compete ideologically with socialism (which they called, in the West, erroneously, “communism” -- already here a sign of rising anti-enlightenment ignorance), the capitalist elites had to appease the people without hurting the system, and the solution was an unprecedented expansion of the middle class. This expansion included the universities, where ideology ended up being produced -- both for practical (the system became too big to be administered by amateurs from the capitalist elite) and ideological reasons (universalization of the the capitalist ideal).
As a result, the production of ideology -- here in this post called the “freedom to be wrong” -- was transferred from the very top of the elite to a new, universalized, middle class: a scheme that still stands today.
That is a trite comment without the provision of better alternatives . Freedom to be right and wrong is the liberal democracy aim, without the consequences of being defenestrated poisoned or jailed for your views. You can always chose to live in China or Russia if you feel that this is it good enough for you
This sounds attractive at first sight. But there is a qualitative difference between a system in which one can have a different opinion, but not enforce it on others, and one in which difference of opinion is brutally repressed. Of course, ultimately the first system will have to repress those who seek to repress all difference, in order to ensure its own existence. But not allowing itself to be swallowed by the intolerant is not the same as being intolerant. One is of course entitled to cry foul when their intolerance is not allowed to prevail - this is precisely part of liberalism. But try crying foul, or claiming the right to be wrong, in one of your morally equivalent illiberal states and see how long it takes before you are disappeared. That this is a paradox is not a novel point, as you know - it's Polanyi's famous paradox of tolerance. But the fact that it's paradoxical doesn't mean that there is no morally significant distinction between being tolerant of difference while repressing intolerant movements and being intolerant.
Well said. Kind of discouraging to even have to be defending the right to free speech, now, given the amazing world it has helped build in the last few centuries. A healthy humanity needs a diversity in thought just like it needs a diversity in the gene pool. Hopefully not too big a tangent here, but this need for real diversity is one of the biggest advantages of humanity becoming multiplanetary…ie in the 17th century puritans emigrating to future Massachusetts was an option. Hopefully in the 21st century plus, Mars etc become similar outlets for new ideas and societies…like the frontier North America became such a healthy influence on Europe in the recent past.
>When I thought of that, my answer was: the freedom to read and listen to whatever I want, and to say whatever I want. And I think this is all.
Disagree. It's to live the way I want that is derived from the free speech and therefore to have happier life. And for the political groups i.e. nations to have their governance based on public discourse that should spring a degree but nor full public resolution and acceptance based on available information. Defo it's now harder to do in the "global village" world, but it does not mean it's wrong.
Not all the nations have a luxury to speak like Americans or Western Europeans, demagoguing about fallacy of liberalism while some of other nations are literally bleed out defending that way to live that taken for granted among "westerners".