Liberal democracy: the threat to it is real
But it is us who weaken it the most, our own worst enemy within
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.’
Dickens was writing about the French Revolution (for those who are curious, it’s the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities), the harbinger of the modern age in politics and governance, much as the industrial revolution in Britain, well under way by 1790, was the economic messenger of the future. Over two centuries on, that future looks bleak; all that ‘progress’ leading to the existential crisis of man-made global warming. It’s the correct term: women probably wouldn’t have made the same mistakes.
As it happens, this week a study was published reporting that about a quarter of young men think feminism has gone too far. It would be a musical hall joke if we didn’t already know that, far from being triumphant, feminism (let’s just call it women’s rights) has been taking a hard knock, not least from the lunatic fringe of the trans-ranters. It’s never a debate, just sad (overwhelmingly male) people who want to be anything but themselves and are more than happy to bring down society and its values to get what they think they want.
But, they’re not the bigger problem, more a symptom.
I’ve spent some time of late reading a recent book, The New Leviathans, by the political philosopher, John Gray. It’s significant enough – and densely argued – for me to choose to keep reading it, to try to get to grips with the essence of his re-evaluation of Thomas Hobbes 17thcentury masterpiece of political polemic, Leviathan, a work I haven’t read since 1968.
Gray suggests that Hobbes, far from being understood at the time and ever since, as the justifier of authoritarian governments, was, in fact, a true liberal, not the invented version folk like you and I bandy about today, as if it were the answer. Without going too far into Gray’s reasoning (trust me, this is one of those rare texts that have heft in our currently flippant political discourse), he makes the point that what we generally understand by liberalism in politics, in society, in culture is what is bringing us to our knees, outgunned (quite literally) by two new Leviathans, Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China.
The first is dominated by a man whose eschatological pronouncements may soon invoke Russia’s first use of nuclear weapons (apparently blessed by Orthodox priests and adorned with ikons), in the religious zealot’s belief down the ages that to save the soul of a people, god may demand you have to destroy it.
Meanwhile, in China, Xi (previously massively supported through the West’s casual acceptance of cheap goods, manufactured in many cases by slave – including child – labour) has constructed a surveillance society. We’re sleepwalking into a similar situation with our ever-present CCTV, the police use of facial recognition technology, constant online interference (developed by China). So far, so bad.
Back to Gray: one of his central themes (and quoting Hobbes liberally) is that if you allow complete liberty, extant all around, that sense of entitled self that ‘I’ can be anyone I want, we are returning to what Hobbes defined as a ‘state of nature’ (not for him a happy place). In that state, he said (this is the short version) there would be ‘no arts, no letters, no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.’
The picture of the West painted by Putin and Xi is of a terminal decline, brought on by weak government (because they are democratic), decadence derived out of base materialism and engineered through that most toxic of economic theories, neo-liberalism. They have a point: we’ve become dangerously complacent since the fall of the Berlin Wall when the more foolish (George Bush for one) announced that the West had ‘won’ the Cold war and the inane (not just my judgement) academic, Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History.
Since that turbulent time (the West would not have invaded Iraq had the USSR still been in existence) western societies have increasingly sought to capture the power of the state in a new civil war of all against all between self-defined collective identities (MAGA v Democrats; Leavers v Remainers; black against white as defined by critical race theory; you get the idea). As Gray says ‘there is an unrelenting struggle for the control of thought and language. Enclaves of freedom persist, but a liberal civilization based on the practice of tolerance has passed into history.
‘In schools and universities, education inculcates conformity with the ruling progressive (my emphasis) ideology. The arts are judged by whether they serve approved political goals. Dissidents from orthodoxies on race, gender and empire find their careers terminated and their public lives erased. This repression is not the work of governments (my emphasis). The ruling catechisms are formulated and enforced by civil society. Libraries, galleries and museums exclude viewpoints that are condemned as reactionary. Powers of censorship are exercised by big hi-tech corporations. Illiberal institutions are policing themselves.’ I would add that anti-social media has a huge and entirely negative role here, not just in the bile it generates, but in the rage, the squeezing tight into a set of unregulated, mob-driven, constantly changing, set of norms.
Liberalism as a set of rules is based on four ideas: it is individualistic (asserting the moral primacy of each of us); it is egalitarian (we are all the same); it is universalistic (we are one species); perhaps most important of all given the present circumstances, it is meliorist, the idea that then world can be made better. As a properly governed and regulated ethos, it is worth fighting for but, right now, our worst enemies are here among us, feeding the flames of intolerance, restricting debate, closing down what ought to be freedoms, all in the name of ‘my rights, my mental health, my choice of lifestyle’ (look no further than your local billionaire – our one lives in a castle up the road).
It’s taken us far too long to accept we are not special, chosen some by some supernatural entity to lord it over the planet. In many respects, we’re the vilest of species, the lowest of the low because, with self-consciousness, we ought to know better. But, better late than never.
There has been always been a worm at the heart of liberal philosophy (as Hobbes might have written). It is that we are not, nor never have been in truth, ‘progressing’ toward a final global state where liberal democracy is teleologically defined or even implied. It is not. Just as science can be used by bad actors for their ends, as much as by the good, it is a way of life many of us believe we can justify. But justify it we must in the way we live our lives: all the time. It is our moral duty.
Gray ends his book by quoting Samuel Beckett: ‘if we go on it is because we cannot do otherwise. It is life that pulls us on, against the tide, life that steers us into the storm.’ If you want a musical metaphor for that sensation, listen to the last 60 bars of the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred symphony. Then, maybe, you’ll get it.
We need to talk about Trump
There’s been a frantic if not to say hysterical discussion in the US liberal prints about whether to accept the mainstream media’s obsession of a rematch between Trump and Biden (two old men, except at least the latter’s not barking mad), or to focus on the chances of stopping Trump getting the Republican nomination. I think it is safe to say Trump will run in November, even if he is in jail (highly unlikely) or even barred from running (a rank outsider). His cabal will organise a ‘write-in’ vote.
It hardly matters: whatever the outcome of the vote on November 5th, Trump will declare himself the winner. It’s what happens next that counts. The USA is divided in ways we in Europe can scarcely comprehend. As it happens, I landed in the States the day after the presidential election of 2016. Shortly after, I found myself in a dirt-poor part of North Carolina. It could have been a scene from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Life-long Democrats, they’d all just voted for Trump. They probably guessed he was full of shit but at least he sounded like he’d big the country up. When you’re poor, the foundational national myths may matter more, not less.
We’ve all asked, how does he do it? Here’s how, courtesy of Sidney Blumenthal:
‘Time after time, with predictable regularity, never missing a beat, Donald Trump proclaims his innocence. He always denies that he has done anything wrong. The charge does not matter. He is blameless. But this is only the beginning of the pattern. Then, he attacks his accusers, or anyone involved in bringing him to account, usually of committing the identical offense of which he stands accused.
But it is not enough for him to lash out. Then, he declares himself to be the victim. Whatever it is, he is falsely accused. But his self-dramatization as the wounded sufferer is only half his story: he insists that whoever has accused him is in fact the offender. He emerges triumphant, the martyr, the truth-teller, courageously unmasking the real villain. J’accuse!
‘Trump’s pattern is textbook manipulation – literally. It has a precise name given to it after decades of academic research. Jennifer Freyd, now professor emerita of psychology at the University of Oregon, developed the theory over her career studying sexual assault, trauma and institutional betrayal. She named the process by which the perpetrator seeks to avoid accountability Darvo – a strategy with the elements of denial, attack, and reversal of victim and offender.’
There’s more to explore here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/29/donald-trump-americans-us-culture-republican
This is a topic I will, inevitably, be re-visiting as the months ahead unfold.
This week: Tim read The Inequality of Wealth by Liam Byrne who, as he writes, is now most remembered for the note he left his successor at The Treasury saying ‘I’m afraid to tell you there is no money’. As he wryly points out, he was simply following a long tradition of Treasury ministers penning similar notes. Maudling (a deeply corrupt Tory of the 1960s and 70s), as departing Chancellor wrote to his successor, Callaghan, ‘sorry to leave it in such a mess.’ The heart of the book is a dissection of the economic woes we are in and how to fix them. It’s a classic of centre-left thought on finding an answer to propping up a failed model (the ‘market’) and extracting more for the common weal. As his ideas may well be the template for the next Government, it’s worth more than a cursory glance.
Tim,
You write with such eloquence, enthusiasm and truth…so clever..
Love your take on Trump. It is so refreshing to get your take on what is going on out there.
Have a great weekend,
Love to Torli. xx