Why Liberalism Failed

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapter 6-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 2 Summary: “Uniting Individualism and Statism”

In reflecting on the division of modern politics, Deneen muses that there seems to be a dichotomy that exists regardless of system:

Whether described as left vs. right, blue vs. red, or liberal vs. conservative, this basic division seems to capture a permanent divide between two fundamental human dispositions, as well as two worldviews that are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive of political options (43).

Typically, one side will champion progress, reform, and change and will be future oriented. The other will be strident in preserving past ideals and holding up the customs of the past as received wisdom that should only be changed in the gravest of circumstances and after much reflection.

What most fail to recognize is that modern American politics is simply about two different types of devotees to liberalism: classical liberals (American Republicans) and progressive liberals (American Democrats). In many ways, they share much in common, especially when it comes to the autonomy of the individual and their rights: “[M]odern theory defines liberty as the greatest possible pursuit and satisfaction of the appetites, while government is a conventional and unnatural limitation upon this pursuit” (48). Government is meant to guarantee rights and maximize individual freedom—the two sides simply disagree about what those rights should be and what it means to participate in this institutionally granted liberty.

The linchpin for this mutual affinity is the agreed-upon first principle of the individual as the cornerstone: “At the heart of liberal theory is the supposition that the individual is the basic unit of human existence, the only natural human entity that exists” (50). The classical liberals who make up the American conservative party seek to protect the individual by shrinking the government, limiting its reach, and restricting centralized government largely to the security of the economic sector. The progressive liberals who make up what are colloquially known as the “liberal” American party would rather expand the reach of the state to ensure extrinsic protection of individuals, often by coercion, and ensuring an ethical no-man’s land in which individual liberty—especially in the realm of morals—can reign.

Both of these perspectives, however, create a culture that severs the individual from their ties to family, community, and local rootedness. When convinced to operate purely as individuals, they will become victims of liberalism’s decay: “[D]eracinated humans seek belonging and self-definition through the only legitimate form of organization remaining available to them: the state” (60). In reality, the two versions of liberalism function in much the same way and with much the same goal: “Is it mere coincidence that both parties, despite their claims to be locked in a political death grip, mutually advance the cause of liberal autonomy and inequality?” (63).

Chapter 3 Summary: “Liberalism as Anticulture”

The culture that liberalism creates is, Deneen argues, an “anticulture.” This anticulture is based on three fundamental premises:

the wholesale conquest of nature, which consequently makes nature into an independent object […] a new experience of time as a pastless present in which the future is a foreign land […] [and] an order that renders place fungible and bereft of definitional meaning (65-66).

Rather than organically moving into the future in union with the past, liberalism creates new systems of shared experience that destroy culture.

This destruction of culture—dubbed anticulture—is the result of increased homogenization and standardization, as well as the tendency of liberalism to destroy local cultures and memories in favor of monoculture. The assumption that allows this process to take shape is the assumption that what has been traditionally called “culture” is in fact artificial and that what is needed for human progress is a return to nature. This is directly opposed, however, to the ancient view of the relationship between nature and culture: “Just as the potential of a plant or animal isn’t possible without cultivation, so it was readily understood that the human creature’s best potential simply could not be realized without good culture” (68).

First, Deneen addresses liberalism’s commitment to the conquest of nature. Culture was always previously seen as the means by which human beings could reach their potential, thanks to shared principles and shared wisdom that was passed from person to person, either vertically (down through the ages) or horizontally (within a community in the same era). The ancients considered people without culture to be people without a means to perfect themselves: “People who are ‘uncultivated’ in the consumption of both food and sex, Aristotle observed, are the most vicious of creatures, literally consuming other humans to slake their base and untutored appetites” (68). In other words, culture was what allowed a person to be truly free. Liberalism, by contrast, desires to hold culture at bay thanks to its conviction that culture is a limiting factor to human nature and desires. Liberalism, by definition, wishes to destroy any limiting factors, thus making explicit liberalism’s antagonism to true culture.

Second, there is liberalism’s commitment to timelessness. Both forms of liberalism that have been discussed thus far—classical and progressive—are uncomfortable with the past (though for different reasons, typically). The solutions to modern problems must be met by modern solutions; any acquiescence to the past would be to deny the principle of progress. The problem this creates is that it is very difficult to maintain an organic link to the past, which is an essential aspect of what it means to be human. Alexis de Tocqueville, for instance, predicted that this ignorance and hostility to the past would eventually result in the recreation of past mistakes and systems that had been formerly rejected: “[H]e predicted that a new aristocracy would arise, but that its ‘brutish indifference’ born of temporal fracturing would lead it to be worse than the aristocracy it was replacing” (76).

Third and finally, there is liberalism’s commitment to the destruction of place. Deneen writes, “Liberalism valorizes placelessness. Its ‘state of nature’ posits a view from nowhere: abstract individuals in equally abstract places” (77-78). Liberalism does most of its thinking in a vacuum, without recourse to the real-world implications it assumes. For this ideology, human beings are individuals without time, without place, without a home, and without connection to a particular culture or people. Treating individuals in this manner results in the assumption that people are interchangeable and that there is nothing special about a person’s unique circumstances or relationships.

Without a strong connection to a unique culture in which the person feels rooted and devoted to, they are more apt to decide in favor of the monoculture, consuming mass-produced things created specifically for the liberal capitalistic society they inhabit. Deneen argues,

Culture was the greatest threat to the creation of the liberal individual, and a major ambition and increasing achievement of liberalism was to reshape a world organized around the human war against nature, a pervasive amnesia about the past and indifference toward the future, and the wholesale disregard for making places worth loving and living in for generations (90).

Chapters 2-3 Analysis

The differences between the liberals and conservatives in American politics can be quite rancorous and can appear insurmountable in many ways. However, what Deneen is doing in this book is moving past the veneer of practical disagreement on policy outcomes and laws and diving deep into the philosophical bedrock upon which liberalism rests and that, in fact, consists of both the political left and right (See: Background).

Drawing on the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke—two of the most widely influential Enlightenment philosophers—Deneen shows how classical liberalism overturns the ancient anthropology that had dominated philosophical and political thought for nearly 2,000 years, arguing that liberalism has led to The Destruction of Organic Culture. Classically understood, the human person was an individual that was part of a wider whole, part of a community; this is the reason why Aristotle called people “political animals,” as they were creatures who were by nature suited to living in a city, that is, in a community.

By contrast, liberalism, as influenced by Hobbes and Locke, conceives human beings as wholes in themselves completely apart from any community. In this view, human beings are naturally individual and exist alone, and it is only by mutually agreed-upon rules that they can live together: This is the “social contract” theory. These vastly different modes of thought concerning the human person and community account in large part for the differences in defining and protecting liberty.

Under the ancient view, where human beings are inherently suited to dwelling within a community, liberty is thus understood to be limited in nature and always centered upon the common good. Traditional liberty is thus very much concerned with cultivating virtue and restraint in fulfilling personal desires, especially through avoiding fulfillment at the expense of one’s neighbor or the community as a whole. Traditional liberty is the means by which one flourishes within an organic community, not apart from it. Under the modern theory, however, liberty is designed to fulfill the individual alone and apart from any obligation or duty to another, be it a neighbor or the community. Liberalism strips social duties from the person, centering individual rights in their place.

As a result, Deneen explores The Destruction of Organic Culture under liberalism. Not only is liberty redefined, but it also serves to destroy community for the sake of the individual. Previously, an individual would be integrated into their family and community by way of culture, but liberalism works to destroy communities and culture thanks to its intrinsic drive toward monoculture and homogeneity. Deneen goes so far as to call liberalism an exercise in “anticulture” thanks to the fact that it cannot help but destroy local cultures, local idiosyncrasies, and people’s sense of rootedness in one particular place.

An easy example of this is the fact that liberalism rewards individual choices made independently of the community, and so local communities will disintegrate all by themselves through the individual choices made without considering the community’s common good. People move to where the money is best, with the most readily available opportunities, to where their job requires them to live. In this way, liberalism does not encourage communities to flourish, it encourages individuals to strive for the greatest level of self-achievement. When individuals are put in competition with community, Deneen believes, liberalism ensures that the community loses.

Finally, the word “culture” itself is a remnant of a previous era. First, culture is rooted in the word “cultivation,” which is the art, craft, and building up of something brought into existence by human ingenuity. One cultivates a garden or a family ethos. Deneen regards cultivation as being about making the world a better place. Secondly, culture also comes from the word “cult,” that is, for worship. Culture inculcates in human beings a sense of what they must worship, what they need to keep at the center of their lives and make most important for living, the kind of life that is good and desirable. The destruction of culture is thus the destruction of what is best in human life and human activity. In attributing this destructive tendency to liberalism, Deneen posits that liberalism has a baneful effect on human culture—and more specifically on all unique, localized human cultures—in the long term.