Liberalism: Doomed to Repeat Its Past Mistakes?

08/15/16, Narve Strand

1. Background
To compare our own times to the 30s has become a sport. What has got people
scared these days is the growing disbelief in globalization among the citizens
themselves and the rise of political candidates intent on wrecking the status quo.
There are basically two ways of reacting to this: Blame the voters or the current
system. Liberals themselves, for obvious reasons, tend to favour the first strategy. It
doesn't matter if you're a social or an economic liberal apparently. Here's why I think
it's bad idea:

2. Liberalism and Human Nature

It tends to assume that most people are either too immoral or too stupid to
make informed, responsible decisions about the common good.

If that's my take on human nature, then why be for democracy in the first place?
If I'm still deeply worried when ordinary citizens only get to vote once every four
years (and in the rare referendum), that's a sign I don't really believe in indirect
democracy as a system either.

3. Liberalism as Ideology

It isn't self-evident, or inherently more probable even, that ordinary citizens

are incapable of orienting themselves in the world and knowing their own
best interest.

We live in an inter-dependent world and political issues are often complex. But going
from this to voters being incapable of judging the situation rightly, or skepticism about
globalization being morally wrong, that doesn't follow. It means there's something not
quite right about my own beliefs or judgments (they're "metaphysical", "ideological,"
"illogical" somehow).

4. Placing Blame

We shouldn't rule out the possibility beforehand that liberalism itself is to

blame for the rise of illiberal candidates and voting behaviour.

You don't need to be a racist Nationalist or a rabid Marxist either to agree with this. It
might be that liberalism under certain conditions helps provoke this kind of reaction.
Say, in societies where the international economy is held to undermine their political
autonomy too greatly. In representative democracies when all the major candidates
or parties are seen as ignoring the real interests of the majority too much, having
done so for a long time. Where the electoral system is weighted towards vested
interest while political discourse itself is highly idealist and reality-distorting. In fact,

this scenario has been described and analyzed already in one of the founding
documents of international relations (E. H. Carr's, *The Twenty Years Crisis: 19191939* (London: Macmillan, 1939 (rev. ed, 1946). It's a kind of scenario that has
arguably existed several times in the past. The last time: In the 30s.