Defining liberalism seems straightforward enough. A quick google search ought to do the trick, right? It won’t. For centuries, liberals—and their opponents—have struggled to define the term. Across the world, the word means different things for different people. In Europe and Australia, it evokes market fundamentalism. To Americans, it is synonymous with big government and political correctness. Terms such as “neoliberal” and “progressive” are sometimes used to distinguish its myriad strands, often to little avail. Indeed, it is much easier to describe what is illiberal—authoritarianism, protectionism, oligarchy—than to find a coherent definition for liberalism.
The tragedy today is that the world seems set more than ever for a backlash against liberalism, even as liberalism grapples with its conflicting identity. The Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on supply chains, exploiting the interconnectivity of a globalized world to decimate economies and lives on a massive scale. It has coerced states into closing down borders—turning down migrants and businesses—and caused skepticism of multilateral institutions. And it has increased the powers of the state to an extent unfathomable even a mere decade ago, all while America and China—the world’s two largest superpowers—look geared toward a 21st century Cold War. All this sets the stage for a new world order—one that is more protectionist, unilateral, and fundamentally illiberal than any time since world war two. To adapt, the adage goes, is to survive. That is no more true for individuals than for political philosophies. If liberalism is to endure in the post-covid world, it must reform itself politically and intellectually. That requires synthesizing and integrating its disparate ideological strands into a coherent, logical whole.
The idea that liberalism is in crisis and in need of self-reform is nothing new. Books on the subject have multiplied ever since the Financial Crisis in 2008 exposed the limits of free markets and the frailty of the liberal elite. Coupled with the rise of right-wing populists such as Donald Trump, the victories of anti-globalist movements such as Brexit, and the relative success of self-professed democratic socialists and “progressives” on the American left, there is no doubt liberalism did face a challenge. Less than two years ago, The Economist, a traditionally liberal newspaper, published a large essay on the fact, calling for liberals across the world to take action instead of sinking into complacency.
Nevertheless, Covid-19 represents a genuinely new threat—one that will invigorate illiberal opposition and threaten liberal goals. Fears of increasing nationalism leading to isolationism could come true, as countries lock down borders to prevent the entry of potentially infected foreigners. These policies against migration may outlast the pandemic1. As the virus destroyed global supply chains, worries about economic dependence on foreign powers—namely China—could prompt protectionism and endanger free trade. European leaders such as France’s finance and economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, are already talking of “national sovereignty” in economic affairs2. Meanwhile, multilateral institutions such as the UN and WHO face intense scrutiny over their mishaps during the pandemic; the UN failed to keep temporary ceasefire agreements despite the universal threat posed by Covid-19, not least because of bickering between America and China3. In fact, it took two months after the return of hostilities for the Security Council to formally adopt a universal peace resolution. The UN is in such a fragile state that the United States—its founding father and, historically, its principal backer—pulled out of the World Health Organization (WHO) in early July4. Not to mention that the economies of the rich world and beyond are in tatters, and that, as a response, government is more bloated than ever.
Faced with collapsing multilateral institutions, increasing hostility toward open borders and free trade, and the swelling of the state, liberals have an arduous task: preserving the world order they helped build to respond to tomorrow’s challenges. The towering issues of the twenty-first century—income inequality, climate change, and the rise of an authoritarian China—can not be solved outside of the liberal framework. No other political philosophy provides the necessary emphasis on individual liberty and rational cooperation that is integral to tackling crucial problems. But even as liberals try to mobilize their resources for change, they face a profound identity crisis—one that is building up for decades. Right-wing libertarians think conventional liberalism’s emphasis on justice and equality of opportunity tramples economic freedom. Left-leaning “New Deal” liberals, and their fellow “progressives,” consider the doctrine’s laissez-faire free trade and free-marketeer spirit a threat to social justice. Liberals stuck in the center don’t know how to respond: both sides have some merit to their points. In the end, they are left exposed to attacks on all sides, culminating in the rise of populism and radicalism seen well before the pandemic.
What liberalism needs at this moment is self-reflection. Only then can it unite its seemingly contradictory strands into a coherent, politically presentable whole. For starters, it is worth understanding how liberalism came to be in the first place. Though traces of liberalism can be identified in writers of antiquity, the middle ages, and the Renaissance, liberalism as we know it today mainly appeared in the work of two 17th century English thinkers: Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Both developed their philosophy in a quest to define political legitimacy: what made a government representative of its subjects. Hobbes introduced the idea of an implicit “social contract” formed between the people and the government; this contract defines the scope of the state’s reach into our lives and the extent of individual liberty. The monarch is not legitimate because of “divine will,” but rather because the people accept their contract. Therefore, a ruler’s legitimacy lies with the consent of the governed. To this, Locke added the idea of inviolable “natural rights”: the right to life, liberty, and property, as he famously expressed in his Two Treatises of Government. These rights are sacred, and the sovereign can never breach them without the due process of law. The ideas of these two thinkers would later form the backbone of the Age of Enlightenment and America’s constitutional revolution.
So, what do these two classical thinkers teach us about liberalism today? It seems, based on Hobbes and Locke’s thinking, that their central preoccupation was not social justice, economic freedom, or even democracy—but individual liberty. They sought to conceive a political system where the state—society’s most powerful organized group—could not undermine the rights of the individual. The further concepts of representative government, separation of powers, the universal rule of law, and human rights, all serve to strengthen the individual’s independence from the state. They create a limited scope for interference from government that is only applicable if sanctioned by the due process of law.
Contemporary liberalism would do well to revive the classical concern for individual liberty. Of course, as societies evolved and transformed, new strands of thought developed to respond to society’s most pressing problems. FDR’s New-Deal liberalism emerged out of the calamity that was the Great Depression; the welfare state came out of concerns for individual wellbeing. Even democracy—often considered synonymous with liberalism—was a later contribution, the result of a backlash against 19th-century aristocracy. But an emphasis on individual liberty is compatible with many tenets of modern liberalism and can serve as a yardstick for judging future policy. For example, in the United States, the idea of universal healthcare is repudiated by many right-wingers under the assumption that it empowers state control. But one can hardly argue that universal health insurance poses a threat to an individual’s liberty—especially when so many on the right seem fine with massive military expenditures by government. Even a philosopher such as Friedrich Hayek, the great Austrian liberal-turned-libertarian, argued in his 1944 Road to Serfdom that “the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong.” Though welfare policies such as universal healthcare may have other problems, it is at the very least necessary for politicians of all stripes to consider them, instead of dogmatically rebuking them with the catch-all label of “socialism.”
On the other hand, remembering the fundamental of liberty can help identify potentially dangerous policies, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal last year to federally charter corporations. Though in principle federal charters could serve to regulate corrupt businesses, such legislation can face regulatory capture. If the government is the arbiter of whether a specific company’s acts are in accordance with the values of “stakeholders”, then any government can choose to persecute a politically hostile company and its shareholders with vague charges of abuse. Under the pretext of protecting “stakeholders”, the state wields an almost infinite coercive power over companies. Indeed, in the hands of the Donald Trumps of the world, the legislation can do tremendous harm to individual liberty. Better to keep corporations in check through antitrust law and transparent legal proceedings, where the rule of law allows for particular infringements to be considered by a citizen jury, instead of delegating the deciding power to the state.
Valuing liberty is the best way to advance liberalism in the 21st century. Liberals must not present themselves as a complacent, aristocratic, out of touch elite, but rather as crusaders for freedom. They should seize the moment to “crush infamy”—that which is dogmatic and against freedom, as the French Enlightenment thinker Voltaire put it. They should also embrace skepticism, just as their predecessors did, to articulate convincing arguments against nationalist ideologues and militant “progressives.” They must do what liberal government was made to do: provide the necessary conditions for an individual to flourish, not organize their life. Domestically, that means securing the transparency of the law, opening the economy by crushing monopolies and investing heavily in education and worker retraining. Abroad, it entails thoughtful, rational cooperation to forge international commitments to human rights, democracy, and fighting all-encompassing issues like climate change. In short, it must present itself as a force for change while remembering the lessons of the past; a path to progress guided by reason, debate, and an aversion to dogma.
The world produced by Covid-19 will not be the world of before. It will probably be more protectionist, isolationist, and illiberal. But that need not be the case. Worries on economic dependence on a single nation could foster rigorous multinational supply chains—a more dynamic, and ultimately more global, sort of globalization. It might also prompt a rethink of the harm done by some aspects of globalization, and how to remedy it through policy. The loss of faith in multilateral institutions may show the dangers of slipping American support, and, in turn, actually invigorate them. And the enlarged pillars of the state will, at the very least, overturn the dogmatic idea that government is solely the problem, and never a solution. But for this good to come true, liberalism must be at the forefront of the debate—not “progressives” or rancorous populists. Indeed, Covid-19 offers an opportunity to make a better world, but only with the right mindset. That mindset is a revitalized form of liberalism. Not neoliberalism. Not progressivism. Liberalism.
Works Cited
- “When covid-19 recedes, will global migration start again?” The Economist, August 1st, 2020.
2. Cerulus, Laurens. “Coronavirus forces Europe to confront China dependency.” Politico Europe, March 03, 2020.
https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-emboldens-europes-supply-chain-security-hawks/
3. “How Covid-19 gave peace a chance, and nobody took it.” The Economist, May 05, 2020.
4. Hinshaw, Drew; Armour, Stephanie. “Trump Moves to Pull U.S. Out of World Health Organization in Midst of Covid-19 Pandemic.” Wall Street Journal, July 07, 2020.