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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32053 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Richard Hanania's recent article about how, according to him, this year has shown that liberalism is stronger than many had previously thought inspired me to wonder about what comes first, the liberalism or the success. I would guess that this question is probably meaningless since the answer is that they arise at the same time. At the very least, it is probably not as simple as the liberalism coming first and the success resulting from it.

I was wondering what people here would think about the matter so I will re-post my comment here:

I suspect that a common mistake is to think that liberalism is the state of being of a civilization in which most people support liberalism, whereas the reality is more that liberalism is the state of being of a civilization in which no authoritarian group has managed to completely dominate the others. I suspect that most people who consciously believe in liberalism would become dictators if they could. They do not think that they would, but if the avenues to total rule opened for them they would easily find rationalizations to make total rule by themselves seem altruistic - for example, "we need temporary authoritarianism with us in charge in order to guarantee the long-term survival of liberalism". So liberalism is not the state of being of a civilization which is populated mostly by actual liberals. It is the state of being of a civilization in which multiple competing wannabe authoritarian groups are managing to keep each other in check with none succeeding at gaining total power and completely dominating all the others.

And if this is true, then maybe it is worth it to revise the theory that liberalism leads to successful societies and to say that yes, that is probably true but it may be even more true that successful societies lead to liberalism. It takes a vigorous society to have multiple competing power centers none of which ever manage to come to completely dominate the others. On the other hand, for a society to have only one truly successful power center is a sign of weakness. Such a society lacks the vigor to produce more strong power centers, hence its politics becomes unipolar as one pole crushes the rest.

If this is true - not that I am convinced it is, but if it is - then it is easy to see why liberalism is associated with successful societies. Authoritarian societies are ones that are too weak to prevent themselves from being dominated by one single power center. Liberal societies by definition are those which have been strong enough to have multiple successful power centers that have endured.

a common mistake is to think that liberalism is the state of being of a civilization in which most people support liberalism, whereas the reality is more that liberalism is the state of being of a civilization in which no authoritarian group has managed to completely dominate the others.

There are plenty of countries where there is no central force and they don't necessarily become liberal. They become riven with sectarian conflict, ruled by a gang of warlords constantly making battle against each other.

Liberalism emerged in Europe under different circumstances. It was to quiet religious conflicts rather than intra-elite competition per se. With the benefit of hindsight, it was a fantastic strategy that while it did not abolish war, it reduced mass casualty events like the Thirty Years War. Nationalism is bloodthirsty enough. When combined with religious fervor, it supercharges. Liberalism essentially tried to sever the link and over time it expanded into more and more areas. The foundation of liberalism is to stress the right of the individual, because collectivism can often lead to violent events.

To answer your question in a succinct way: societies because liberal before they become successful. Even nations we view as "illiberal" such as Russia or China are remarkably liberal in a historical perspective. It's just that the overton window has shifted so much to the left over the past century that a 1950s liberal would be denounced as a dangerous right-wing authoritarian today.

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