After Cold War Liberalism? On Finding a New Framework for Liberalism

• In Event: Poster Session: Foundations of Political Theory & Technological Change and Societal Conflict
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Foundations of Political Theory

Abstract

In this essay, I use Samuel Moyn’s Liberalism Against Itself (2023) as a gateway to address the recent debates on Cold War Liberalism. What is striking about Moyn’s work is that he frames his argument along the lines of Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed. For Deneen, every liberal reform, whether leaning toward statism or the free market, always results in the opposite of its intended outcome. He says, for instance, that liberal attempts to limit state power ultimately gave it more extensive powers, or that the attempt to create prosperity though the market ultimately created more anxious and dissatisfied citizens. For Deneen, liberalism “fails” every time it “succeeds” in being implemented – it always brings the opposite of what it intends to bring. Therefore, he argues that what is needed is not more or less liberalism, but a new form of “postliberal” politics altogether.
Moyn’s argument is strikingly similar to Deneen’s. He argues that contemporary liberalism is in crisis due to its adherence to the Cold War model developed by thinkers like Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, and Raymond Aron. He says that, in their rejection of totalitarianism, the Cold War liberals also rejected the utopian and perfectionist aspects of 19th century forms of liberalism – values that are crucial for its survival today. For Moyn, Cold War liberalism has failed because, in their attempt to create a form of liberalism that could face Marxism, the Cold War liberals also destroyed the means that could sustain the faith in liberalism. Moyn believes that the current crisis will only worsen with more calls for Cold War liberalism, and that what is needed is not more or less Cold War liberalism but a new form of liberalism altogether.
I will argue that Moyn’s transposition of Deneen’s argument does not work because Cold War liberalism has not failed – it was not, as he says, a “catastrophe” for liberalism. Not only did it defeat one of the greatest enemies liberalism ever faced, but it also made several contributions to our understanding of the nature of totalitarianism and utopianism, as well as the excesses of ideology and radicalism. Cold War liberalism was an insightful, influential, and enduring liberal contribution to political theory that helped introduce notions such as epistemological skepticism, agonism, and the irreconcilability of values.
Cold War liberalism has not failed; rather, it has outlived its usefulness. Political projects are not supposed to last sub specie aeternitatis, and, after achieving a thorough material and theoretical victory, Cold War liberalism has reached its natural end. After going through its cycle of growth, peak, and decline, it was defeated at the hands of new contenders. While it is one thing to say that liberalism is a multi-secular ideological project that has failed (which is Deneen’s argument), it is another to say that it was a project that belonged to a specific time period.
I will also argue that Moyn’s call for a new progressive and perfectionist liberalism is not entirely convincing. Moyn is calling for a specific form of liberalism (social liberalism), but social liberalism was very much alive in the thought of the Cold War liberals. They argued for Popper’s “piecemeal engineering” through the welfare state, drew influence from social liberals like John Dewey, and their ideas were compatible with emancipatory values such as those of Martin Luther King. If we are to update the framework of Cold War liberalism, then why are we asking for more social liberalism, i.e. more of something that we already had? By merely asking for more social liberalism, we will repeat the ideas of the Cold War liberals without updating them.
I will then argue that, in order to update liberalism, liberals must first seriously contend with the critiques of their opponents. We have to look at what and who undermined the liberal framework, and propose a new framework that counters the problems posed by these critics. In this essay, I will specifically address the critiques of radical democrats. While liberal conceptions of democracy have operated on the premise that political problems can be addressed through discussion, institutional channels, and incremental reforms, radical democrats have questioned these assumptions by arguing for the importance of agonism for democracy. They assert that conflict helps marginalized voices to gain representation and that, by demanding structural changes, these groups are empowered to build their identities. I will examine the problem in radical theories of democracy, namely, the risk that by prioritizing conflict, radical democrats may create a situation where they are unable to further help marginalized groups. By prioritizing conflicts, radical democrats might become entrenched in their political beliefs and might no longer be able to revise their own political presuppositions due to a lack of dialogue with opposing ideologies.

Author

• Pedro Moreira, Texas Christian University