Liberalism

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

This Peregrine Worsthorne Speech stirred up a few things I've been thinking about regarding the Triumph of Liberalism, even if I approach it from a different angle. We live in a Liberal age of Thatcher, Blair and Bush, built on the back on the Social age of Attlee and FDR and slowly we are regressing to a 19th Century capitalist world. This time though it's global, although our much abused social structures still exist for us in the west; our slums are on the other sides of the world reliant on new Athenaeums of patronising 'progressive' liberal philanthropy. However, this time no-one is building Saltaires or Port Sunlights because there are no huddled masses traipsing passed the front gates, no counter-vailing non-conformist do-goodery.

Anyway, let's talk about the triumph of individualism, the 'meritocracy' and the aristocracy of capital that is Liberalism.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 05:51 (nineteen years ago)

Classical Liberalism would be horrified at the anti-competitive power huge corporations are now allowed to wield. Thatcher, Blair and Bush are not really Liberals in any meaningful way at all; rather groupies for the tremendously rich.

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 07:17 (nineteen years ago)

The intellectual end of classical Liberalism maybe, the more practical end I think would be more accomodating (larger entities for a global market?).

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 07:35 (nineteen years ago)

classical Liberalism would also be horrified at the size of the state and the level of social spending under bush/blair/thatcher.

― Roughage Crew (Enrique), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 07:38 (nineteen years ago)

I agree, but this is a liberalism build on a foundation of social democracy. It's not entirely classical. In a way the NHS is the Port Sunlight of our era.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 07:40 (nineteen years ago)

nhs is fucked by its own open-endedness, mission-wise. where does its duty end?

― Roughage Crew (Enrique), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 07:41 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah. It's funny, I've been reading The Affluent Society the last few weeks and Galbraith takes apart the idiocies of faux Adam Smithery 50 bleeding years ago. Modern political parties don't really do economics, they just half-heartedly misread Friedmann and Smith as a figleaf for their innate prejudices.

(Hey fact fans! When I was a shtoopid teenager I thought Milton Keynes was named after two economists!)

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 07:44 (nineteen years ago)

(If you insert that fact into wikipedia it will become true, just watch)

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 07:45 (nineteen years ago)

It seems increasingly obvious that the way the Welfare State was first organised (including Lloyd George here as well as the Atlee gov) has left it with ever-widening unpaperoverable cracks that have been the ideal tools for neo-Liberals to use against it.

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 07:49 (nineteen years ago)

I've been reading Francis Fukayama's latest book ('After the Neo-Cons' or ' Stop it, stop it, stop it this isn't what we meant by Neo-conservatism you're spoiling it for everyone') and it goes to show how much the narrow band of Neo-Liberalism (call it Neo-Conservatism if you're into the narcissism of small differences), based on whatever the high tide mark of social democracy in a particular place is the only game in town politically.

Where Peregrine Worsthorne is spot on is about the arrogant belief in the west that Liberalism is the only game in town and should be stamped on the rest of the world. We'll export democracy and capitalism, but keep socialised medicine and trade unions to ourselves. So what does democracy become; populism as a facade for furthering corporate interests rather than a means of advancing the common interests. In fact, even trade unions have become part of the narrow minded self interests, for a long time, even before the triumph of the Liberals that have been narrow minded self interest groups without the breadth of conscience that is (was) part of the trade union ideal.

Maybe it would be better if the political spectrum was 19th C. Liberalism on the one side and 1950s social democracy on the other

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:17 (nineteen years ago)

call it Neo-Conservatism if you're into the narcissism of small differences

Or if you don't want a 15 minute argument about how that word doesn't mean that anymore. With everyone you say that line to.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:23 (nineteen years ago)

Which is essentially the Fukayama book.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:28 (nineteen years ago)

Haha I forgot to actually quote the word I was talking about (Liberalism)!

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:33 (nineteen years ago)

problems with positing '50s social democracy as political aim:

- 50s only lasted ten years, time marches on, post-war social-democratic model failed, demography, international economy, etc, have changed out of recognition since then.
- was it really so much better than the level of state provision we have now? schooling may well have been better i grant yer, but i'd wager education funding is higher now than then.

― Roughage Crew (Enrique), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:37 (nineteen years ago)

'...better then? the...'

― Roughage Crew (Enrique), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:38 (nineteen years ago)

I'm not sure schooling was much better. The Grammar School/Secondary Modern divide worked out okay for some kids but it did plenty to reinforce class strata, too. I figure the 60s was when Comprehensive Education started to come into its own, flowering in the 70s before being ruthlessly stomped on at some point in the late 80s.

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:42 (nineteen years ago)

What we really need is a 21st century social democracy. But seeing as post-modernist thought has suffocated ideology all we can do is rehabilitate retro idealolgies and dress them up like a phillipe stark boutique hotel.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:44 (nineteen years ago)

I don't think you can blame Blair/Cameron on post-modernism, Ed.

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:45 (nineteen years ago)

Post-moderism is such an amorphous shitty mess that you can blame anything on it, surely that's the point of it.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:48 (nineteen years ago)

I vehemently disagree. But I'm not touching another ILE post-modernism argument with a 30-foot pole.

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:50 (nineteen years ago)

BLAME THOSE PESKY PROTESTANTS AND THEIR WORK ETHIC THEN works for me

― KIWI (Kiwi), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:51 (nineteen years ago)

(the isreal of ILX philosophical arguments, let's not go there)

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:52 (nineteen years ago)

work ethic -- good
religion -- bad

― Roughage Crew (Enrique), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:52 (nineteen years ago)

Protestants and Work - everything I hate in one convenient package.

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:52 (nineteen years ago)

Orange bastards

― The Aff Its Heid Show (Dada), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:52 (nineteen years ago)

Oompaloompas?

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:53 (nineteen years ago)

Exactly!

― The Aff Its Heid Show (Dada), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:54 (nineteen years ago)

Let's not get Oompaloompist.

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:54 (nineteen years ago)

Ok so we don't like Blair, Cameron, Kong Bolly or Oompaloompas.

I think one of the single greatest feature of our Liberal era is a a fear of progression. There is a desire to conserve a 'Liberal Status' quo, progressives and radicals, whilts always having been treated with a certain degree of fear and trepidation no longer get a seat at the table.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 08:58 (nineteen years ago)

i think the opposite is true!

― Roughage Crew (Enrique), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 09:04 (nineteen years ago)

say what you like about liberals, they're not risk averse.

don't know which progressives you mean, mind.

― Roughage Crew (Enrique), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 09:04 (nineteen years ago)

As a society we have no sense of a "mission". People might argue that this is a response to the horrors of Nazism/Communism, but I don't buy it. The Welfare State, after all, was founded on this sense of national purpose. The main political parties all pitch themselves in an essentially managerial role today: arguing the toss over who will be best at not knocking the boat and allowing Capital to accumulate itself most rapidly. It gives the lie to Blair's professed Christianity, really; his politics are the most Godless, hope-less shite since 18th century Toryism.

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 09:05 (nineteen years ago)

we're increasing choice!

― Roughage Crew (Enrique), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 09:08 (nineteen years ago)

we're spreading democracy!

― Roughage Crew (Enrique), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 09:08 (nineteen years ago)

See that Fry and Laurie sketch.

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 09:09 (nineteen years ago)

Although yeah, I was thinking about domestic policy and forgot that we do have a sense of national purpose and it involves bombing Johnny Foreigner. Again.

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 09:10 (nineteen years ago)

society as aggregate of individual personal progress dud, but the mistake as I see it is to view liberalism=teleology; re "world systems thinking" that were driving towards some sort of end goal mission. we aint.theres no going back to meta narratives Christain, Marxist or whatever to reclaim community or mission but still think Max Webber is onto something

― Courtenay Isherwood (Kiwi), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 10:05 (nineteen years ago)

weber even

― Courtenay Isherwood (Kiwi), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 10:09 (nineteen years ago)

theres no going back to meta narratives Christain, Marxist or whatever to reclaim community or mission

So let's try Islam instead

― The Aff Its Heid Show (Dada), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 10:10 (nineteen years ago)

Do you mean "no going back" as won't happen or shouldn't happen? I semi-agree with the latter but strenuously doubt the former.

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 10:13 (nineteen years ago)

I dunno about "should" or not, I just cant see "how" it can happen.

― Courtenay Isherwood (Kiwi), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 10:39 (nineteen years ago)

There seems to be a serious attempt at writing a Christian metanarrative in the US at the moment. Judaeo-Christian ethics still underpins most Western political structures. What dada said about Islam. Marx not as some folks wd like to think.

― Half loaf, half pompadour (noodle vague), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 10:54 (nineteen years ago)

well yes maybe--the US movement today is a none isse to me really but Id argue that the wider "Judeo Christian framework", at least of the type that came out of the reformation with its focus away from the community and onto the indiviudal+ redemption through hard work and all that that entails is central to the problem

― Courtenay Isherwood (Kiwi), Wednesday, 21 June 2006 11:16 (nineteen years ago)

fifteen years pass...

Thought this (by Liam Kofi Bright) was good: https://sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2022/04/why-i-am-not-liberal.html

Although for me it more reinforced my own left-liberalism than talked me out of it, not least because when he gets to the end he's pretty fuzzy on what he sees as plausible alternatives.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Friday, 8 April 2022 14:55 (three years ago)

good stuff

― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Friday, 8 April 2022 17:23 (three years ago)

afaict bright is pretty firmly an analytical philosopher which is ironic because i get a foucault vibe from his account of liberalism's bourgeois roots.

― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Friday, 8 April 2022 17:35 (three years ago)

also was fascinated / amused by one of the responses that says that public sphere neutrality basically emerged out of a sense of exhaustion and was beatified into this wondrous ideology. and here we are, 600 or however many years later, still completely exhausted, unable to articulate any kind of social good, with the will to power sociopath types just using that to build their own personal empires.

― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Friday, 8 April 2022 17:45 (three years ago)

each political philosophy has its characteristic failings when applied to human societies and it seems fairest to compare them on the basis of their flawed real world achievements (e.g. socialized medicine) as opposed to their theoretical perfections. philosophers tend to mistrust this approach. i don't, so, more socialism for me, plz.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 8 April 2022 17:46 (three years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.