Political conflict today is really between two forms of liberalism, classical and progressive, which not only need each other, but provide necessary tools for their opposition. Market atomization and individual personal freedom are two sides of the same coin, which must necessarily destroy traditional culture, community, and result in an aristocracy of belief and wealth based on a Noble Lie which claims equality of humanity but encourages massive personal inequality.
So argues Patrick Deneen in a recent essay:
The Tragedy of Liberalism
http://iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2017_Fall_Deneen.php
Deneen examines three ways that classical and progressive liberalism claim to fight when they are really working together: 1. Liberalism as anti-culture 2. Liberalism against the Liberal Arts 3. The New Liberalocracy.
All our efforts to differentiate, and especially our successes, are accelerating the rise of forces we claim to oppose. I think this explains a lot about the way we are feeling.
What does “market atomization” mean?
the drive of the market to isolate us from a shared community. Could be as buyers but also as workers. For instance pressing us to separate from family to take a better job far from home.
OK thanks. So trying to unravel this … freedom is constricted by market forces, which do so even while claiming to celebrate freedom?
the constraint before was traditional community. Now the market from the right and personal freedom from the left lead to anarchy, which lead to a crackdown from the only authority left, the government. So more freedom leads to more government.
And a dingo ate my baby.
Seriously though, it would be nice to have a more thorough gloss on the article. Deneen is a serious, if conservative, scholar.
I’ll check it out.
Wish I could summarize, don’t have the ability
Sorry, Seascraper.
This is too much for me.
For a couple of reasons:
1) I started my modest academic career in the humanities and formally left it when I pursued advanced degrees in education rather than English. Once upon a time, I didn’t take education seriously as an academic field, but I’ve come to realize I’m an empiricist, a social scientist at heart. I’ll give Deneen credit for juggling abstractions like he does, but he’s so abstract and so bereft of concrete specifics, I can’t manage the time it would take to really understand him.
2) From an academic view, this looks very familiar to me.. Deneen engages a species of deconstruction in which he shows what we thought was is actually its opposite, turning agreement into disagreement, failure into success. This also bears a passing resemblance to Marxist dialectics. I’m suspicious of patterns without empirical evidence.
3) If this were English “theory,” I’d probably understand it better, but he’s talking about political theory, with which I have a passing acquaintance. James Conway might understand it better than I do.
Wish I could do better.
The first third is tough sledding, the examples towards the end may be contentious also, and inside baseball. Thanks for taking a swing at it.
One example we might agree on would be the acceptable choices on Middle East interventionism. Both parties believe that the solution is to take down the existing structures and even cultures because they are probably oppressive. The solutions proposed might be slightly different, but the methods of delivery are surprisingly similar. Technology and openness to the outside must be forced in, to unlock the potential of young people to use it to express themselves personally in the service of expanding freedom. Maybe the Bush White House expected them to start businesses, and the Obama White House expected them to become community organizers, but they would do it with Facebook and they would use it to eliminate local authority and invite global intervention. Do you remember how unseemly it was for the Democrats to grasp for some way to get involved in what was largely a Bush/Cheney operation, to get a piece of the psychic pie at least?
If you think about it there is no way in USA politics to claim that the local culture of the middle east (which really has to be oppressive to work) should be deferred to or even allowed to exist. (Could we defend it even in the USA? Racism and sexism in the red states?) But the result was that once it was removed, chaos and mass murder took over, and the only remedy we can propose is an expanded surveillance state.
Those doing politics on our neighborhood level really have as much claim to be listened to as any backward religious figure in the middle east when faced with the program to alter the world in the service of markets or of human transformation. But if you think about the neighborhood, it really can’t operate on the traditional right/left that we fall so easily into when it comes to national politics.
I was attracted to the article because I know there are dead ends and totalitarianisms at the conclusions of many of the classical liberal positions I hold. It’s easy to see them on the other side but eye-opening to find the way they work together.
I commend Seascraper for posting one of the better classically conservative intellectuals out there. I am well acquainted with Patrick Deneen, as we have both written for Solidarity Hall, a blog and publishing house focused on Catholic Social Teaching. Deneen is hard to classify politically, precisely since he identified the previous fault lines within the American political economy and set himself apart from it. Perhaps as recently as 1990, the fault lines were between a classical liberal vision of the political economy, best exemplified by the Republican Party from Eisenhower-Reagan and the progressive liberal tradition best exemplified by the Democratic Party from FDR through Bill Clinton. Deneen has become far more critical of the fusion of these two ideologies into what we might identify as neoliberalism.
An emphasis on individual autonomy in the social as well as economic spheres that gave rise to socially progressive conservative parties like David Cameron’s Tory’s as well as economically conservative progressive parties like the Blairite and Clintonian Third Way.
I think all of these ideologies are dead, and actually agree with Deneen on the reason why. Place matters, people matter, and culture matters. As we were discussing with the debate on trade, both progressive and conservative technocrats make the argument that people should just move to where the jobs are. For the progressive technocrat, a good example of this may be Jonathan Chait, this means making the argument that West Virginia is obsolete and the people there should get a new skillset and move. That workers dislocated from trade and their families should embrace higher education as the only sustainable path for economic mobility. For the conservative technocrat, JD Vance, Charles Murray and Kevin Williamson come to mind, this means that low skilled working class people should embrace the middle class mores of the professional set. David Brooks once embraced this vision, but is articulating one closer to where Deneen wants us to go while preserving the classical liberalism he despises.
A major blind spot with Deneen and others of his ilk like Rod Dreher, we can call them neoBurkeans perhaps, is that their conservatism is still highly skeptical of the state and highly dependent on religious and racial homogenity in order to flourish. For Dreher, this means retreating to intentional communities centered around (small o) orthodox Christian values. Retreating from the political sphere, ending the marriage of convenience between social and economic conservatives, and embracing an economic communitarianism within a socially conservative community set apart from pluralistic America. Deneen does not go there. He pines for more Republicans like Chris Smith, a reliable pro-labor and pro life vote or an old school Democrat like Joe Moakley with a similar background. Yet, those politicians also have to confront the reality that mass immigration, LGBTQ acceptance, rising secularism, and religious pluralism make that reality almost impossible to return to.
The parochial nature of place has been altered by local forces like gentrificaiton and transnational forces like globalization. Containing those forces requires a strong state. Something neither thinker is willing to admit. Containing those forces will require socializing the economic gains of the market economy and socializing economic mobility and economic opportunity to the places dislocated by change. And it means embracing cultural pluralism. The Muslim or atheist lesbian couple next door have as much agency and place in the public sphere as the Mass going Catholic.
I give Deneen and Dreher a ton of credit for being consistently anti-Trump conservatives and rejecting the more explicitly racial nationalism that the conservative movement is increasingly headed toward. That said, the romantic communities they envision as an alternative to liberal life are themselves exclusionary and homogenous and will produce radicalism potentially just as dangerous as white supremacy or Islamist extremism. This vision is reactionary-not inclusionary.
I think social democracy offers us a viable means to achieving many of the goals of Catholic Social Teaching, mainly, solidarity and subsidiarity. The idea that the commons are shared, the skepticism toward the classical liberal notion that elevates private property above all other rights, and an inclusionary social ethos that gives space for all religious and non-religious voices in public life, as well as all genders and sexual identities. The question for the left is how we adapt to our populist moment.
To me, Deneen identifies a very real end to the liberal state and the liberal order as we know it. Our choice is stark. A romantic nationalism-socialism or communitarianism for my kind but not for yours-or a viable social market economy that mitigates the markets excesses and recognizes that people matter more than profits. I feel this latter vision aligns with the vision of Pope Francis, aligns with the Christian vision for society, and also aligns with where the emerging secular and pluralistic majority wants to go. This is a real partnership for an America that is a more just, more equitable, and in my view as a believer, a more Christian society that is actually more tolerant of diversity.
Thanks for the reply. i feel like Boston has a lot of local Social Democrat Clubs in the form of neighborhood organizations, but they are routinely swamped by builders and other forms of capitalists like universities and hospitals. Are you recommending such clubs for the people of West Virginia? Are you prohibiting other kinds of exclusive clubs?
Seascraper, I respect the fact that you’ve put this out there and are earnest in a desire to debate and to understand. I have some criticisms but they are of the article, and not of you.
I’ve read the piece twice now, and even slept on it, between readings. The conclusions I come to are the same each time: much like one would take a seashell an put it at the ear and it is purported that you would hear the sea, I feel that if you take a printed copy of this article, rolled it up and held it to your ear, you’d very clearly hear Archie Bunker saying “Stifle it, Meathead.”
What Deneen most desires to say but cannot for fear of getting an ‘amen’ from the wrong choir is simply “Hey, white men solved history. It’s done. Now all you libertines just want to ruin it for the sake of free love and no restraints.”
To the extent that ‘classical’ liberalism somehow denies or defies ‘progressive’ liberalism Deneen forgets that, at one point, what he terms ‘classical liberalism’ was subject to the same arguments as he posits against ‘progressive liberalism,’ and was made by people like George III, the French reactionaries in the middle of the Reign of Terror and Napoleon: anti-aristocracy and the concommitant desire for political freedom, coupled with freedom of religion are the beginnings, but he would see them as the whole. He gives away the game by attempting to underline John Stuart Mill in claiming aristocratic rule is to be “delegitimated because of their wholly arbitrary claim to rule” … not that such rule is ILlegitimate but are to be DElegitimated: he’d accept as legitimate an aristocracy whose claim to rule wasn’t arbitrary. (Gee, a Irish guy at Notre Dame… ya think he’s Catholic?) It is this same movement of delegitimizing he rails against in our present status… but because he sees the attempting de-legitimizers motives, either pecuniary or sensual, as arbitrary in and of themselves, he comes down on the ‘other side,”
Aside from the drastic misreading of ‘classical’ liberalism, he’s actually doing a mere substitution on the other side of the coin: if you asked him privately how he spelled ‘progressive’ I’d wager he’d answer, L-I-B-E-R-T-I-N-E. The argument of liberalism being ‘anti-culture’ relies upon the notion that people just want to be totally freed of restraints and the destruction of culture, which he regards as bad, is a side-effect of cultures normative affect, which he regards as good… as well as being not-at-all arbitrary, so acceptable. But he simply doesn’t understand the terms of the debate: One of the clearest, finest, things that ‘classical’ liberalism ever produced was Jeffersons’ Virginia Statute for the Freedom of Religion… But if I applied Deneen’s arguments against the libertine to the Statute (as some did back at the time) Deneen would dismiss the work as a mere legal fiction to enable Jeffersons deism (if not actually atheism) One of the arguments Jefferson makes, however, in defense of religious freedom, is the notion that state sponsored religious intolerance creates, and enforces, habits of hypocrisy. This is actually a deep insight into a believers mind and one that Deneen might share, if he had ever been punished for being Catholic. Jefferson speaks out against the punishment and not, necessarily, the belief for which he may have been punished. And, in America now we have Amish people living next to Mennonites, living next to Quakers… and nobody lives next to the Shakers because their belief expressed itself in a denial of procreative activities and nobody forced them not to… And, similarly, we have Hasidim living next to Orthodox, living next to Reformed… Or Baptist living cheek by jowl with Methodists… and Catholics. Most people don’t want to be entirely free of constraints. They want to choose the constraints that make the most sense to them.
Nobody is punished, in America, for their religion (or lack, thereof) and the entirety of ‘classical’ liberalisms American experiment (so far) can be boiled down to the statements, “you can’t be punished for your religion or for your political thought.” Both Deneen and I agree that these things are good. Deneen, however, wants to draw the line there and say liberalism has been solved. Progressives want to go farther, adding “you can’t be punished for being Black.” and “you can’t be punished for being LBGT”. The antithesis of both of those sentences is a deep part of white culture, and since Deneen doesn’t see them as arbitrary, he doesn’t see them as either illegitimate or in need of delegitimization. (and, in fact, the same arguments Jefferson used against state sponsored religious intolerance work against state sponsored gender and sexual identity: what’s more hypocritical than a gay man attempting to date a straight woman? and this is enforced? )
Most clearly, in the section on ‘Liberalism v academy’ Deneen suggests that the destruction of culture leads inexorably to anarchy and ‘anti-culture.’ Again, this mirrors earlier complaints against ‘classical’ liberalism: liberalism started off as ‘anti-monarchical’ and ‘anti-aristocracy’ but when put to the question became, decidedly, pro-democracy; which, near as no never mind, to the monarchy looks like anarchy as well as seeming unsustainable… By suggesting that STEM education is merely ‘practical’ he dismisses a long tradition of ‘natural philosophy’ (both Newton and Einstein forthrightly claimed to be exploring Gods thoughts in their efforts), and the gains brought by such people as Charles Darwin (who trained, initially, with the aim of being an Anglican Pastor) or Alexander Graham Bell (a teacher of the deaf) in which STEM is seen as an entirely legitimate avenue to meaning. What follows on (and in a democracy is this any surprise?) is a culture informed by efforts to do away with the worst aspects of a previous culture. Of course, to someone who thinks he lives in a culture that solved history, anything else is going to look both chaotic and unsustainable. But education, of whatever, kind, can provide meaning… it’s just a meaning that Deneen can’t see, therefore he defines it as meaningless.
what I felt in his story of classical liberalism was a pretty accurate description of Paul Ryan type conservatism, if you can believe that Trump and Ryan are representing contrasting and battling visions of say, the purpose of our country.
Deneen’s version of history then would be that the path to money and power for the Ryan-type conservative s was to use money to smooth out personal objections and conflicts over religion race sex etc. I think he’s saying they won, i.e. you won. Is it bothering you that this is what victory looks like?
The conflict, such as it is is not between competing forms of liberalism, as I’ve demonstrated, but in competing understandings of the use of liberalism itself: on the one hand Ryan, who is a Randian acolyte and therefore regards selfishness as a moral virtue, indeed an imperative, who wants to say “I got mine. Job done. It is not necessary for liberalism to evolve, or cause us to evolve any further.” and someone like myself who says “wait a minute… .job not done.”
The conflict, in fact, lies in your very willingness to declare victory, and on your terms alone, not in any inherent contradictions to or with liberalism, of any age.
There is a motive force behind the cultural enforcement of hypocrisy: The cultural interpreters do not see the alternate view as legitimate; the way that King George III (who was, at the time, both head of state and head of church) thought Thomas Jeffersons democratic tendencies and religious tolerance mere indulgences is the same way todays conservatives see homosexuality as simple sensualist indulgences or misguided, even rebellious, identity seeking. Jefferson’s reply to that might well be (and mine is quite certain to be) “So what? You still can’t or shouldn’t punish them for that.” But ‘classical’ liberals like Ryan (and especially Pence) most certainly want to punish them for it. It is in this way that Deneen can invoke the “Noble Lie” as progressiv a fiction to, in essence, permit libertine behaviour and paper over cultural decay… because he can’t conceive of such behaviour as anything but libertine.
Thumbs up, Petr!
I have to say we often spar, but Petr is always a well educated and thoughtful commentator and these replies are no exception. In this case we happen to align on our views and I do think he makes a compelling defense of classical liberalism infused with the progressive movement.
I also think many acolytes and critics of Mill tend to forget his latter Porto-social democratic tendencies. Awfully similar to Thomas Paine in that regard. Both in terms of how skeptical they are of the supremacy of private property rights over social good and how often their classical liberal or libertarian successors tend to gloss over those elements of their philosophy. Petr also dives into the education argument which I glossed over.
Deneen seems to be defending a Millian approach to liberal education-as does Dreher-despite the fact that they both favor religious institutions capable of enforcing a capital Orthodoxy. Deneen is a consistent defender of academic freedom at Notre Dame and has even sided with intra church ideological opponents against the hierarchy. This is laudable-but also entirely inconsistent with a traditionalist conservatism that values those traditions over modernity when the two clash. We can’t maximize free speech on the one hand while preserving a scared culture from creeping secularism on the other.
As a believer, I strongly feel that the church should abandon the moral hypocrisy of the free market in favor of a greater role for the state to capture unearned profit and redistribute it to the poor. Such a policy would actually lead to the cultural cohesion and middle class values this author seeks to restore. The libertine culture is a direct result of too much capital in too few hands. Chesterton and other culturally conservative critics of capitalism would agree that redistribution is essential and requires a strong government to achieve.
I do think where we run into an epistemological difference is when these traditionalists who abhor the free market encounter either a marketplace of ideas or a marketplace of identities. The former is exactly what they defend in a liberal education, despite their supposed distaste for Locke and Mill. The latter is an inevitable by product of the former and one that enriches the culture in my judgment.
James, terrific response.
I’m glad you and Petr could give Seascraper some of the commentary his post deserves.