The most truthful thing about the modern post-truth world is that the liberal order is crumbling. What G. John Ikenberry refers to as the ‘liberal leviathan’ is in throes of a protectionist demagogue who promises to deliver the American working class from the afflictions of neo-liberal capitalism and make ‘America great again’.
Ironically, promises of emancipation are coming from a businessman, soon to assume office as the President of the United States, whose destiny had been tied to the unimpeded freedom of market forces and speculative finance which were the cornerstone of US economic policies, both under the Democrats and Republicans. The victory of Donald Trump reflected the fact that citizens cannot always be treated as customers, a fact which has played out in the three decade long history of neo-liberalism.
Although, it is sure that the President elect will have to renege on many of the promises which had been made by him, ostensibly because of the structural constraints imposed by neo-liberalism, the failing however would lead to a fresh search for culprits within. The Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and others who constitute the peripheral tapestry would be implicated for all that is bad and stops America from being great again.
None of it would slake the demands of the workers of the ‘rust belt’ who overwhelmingly voted not for Trump but against the neo-liberal policies of Barack Obama. They would remain where they are until a progressive political mobilisation would allow them to see the elephant in the room, neo-liberal capitalism, under whose weight the liberals have recently crumbled.
The veracity of ‘liberalism’ as a coherent political philosophy is contestable as it had meant different things in different epochs. For the English it meant curbing the power of the monarchy in the face of rising bourgeoisie culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1688; for the French it meant the end of the exploitative Bourbons who directed the starving populace to eat cakes in the unavailability of bread; for the Americans it served as a philosophy to reject the authority of the British monarch and Parliament.
the political moorings, liberalism has one thing in common which cuts across all epochs, ‘property’. Right to acquire property and its perpetuation has been the cornerstone of liberal creed. In other words, it has tried to sober the acquisitive nature of humans under the euphemism of ‘wealth of nations’, absolving the process of ‘accumulation’ of its vices. This subterfuge had its egregious intertwining with politics resulting in modern liberal democracies operating under the exploitative hood of capitalism. The citizens of such systems enjoyed the fruit of a tree over which the snake hung. Barring the low hanging fruits, any attempt to fetch the juiciest fruit, which lay atop, was met with a poisonous sting.
Erstwhile liberals had their worst nightmares in the inter-war years which saw the rise of fascism as a force to reckon with in Europe. Contra the dominant view that the rise of fascism was fomented by the policy of appeasement followed by Britain, it was the conscious policy of the liberal capitalists in Britain to establish London as the finance capital of the world which led them to stay away from the dirt and muck of European politics. It was the same dirt in which the blood of the British youth flowed unabated for a period of five years.
The post-war world order saw an even more rejuvenated liberal creed whose battered torso was supported by Keynesianism and permanent political hostility vis-à-vis the communist bloc. Generous funding by America of the western European states, perennial hostility of anything ‘red’ and institution-building with special onus on structural adjustment norms characterised the liberal order on the other side of the ‘iron curtain’.
All was good on the western front as the post-war economy accentuated massive growth in the liberal democracies, especially America and Britain until the economic policies of Keynes started losing their vigour by the 1970s. Former American judge Lewis Powell indicted state welfarism and circulated a secret memo to the US Chamber of Commerce calling for a new ‘collective project’ which capital needed. He wrote, “We in America already have moved very far indeed towards some aspects of state socialism, as the needs and complexities of a vast urban society requires types of regulations and control that were quite unnecessary in earlier times. In some areas, such regulation and control already have seriously impaired the freedom of both business and labour, and indeed of the public generally”.
The memo was received with great aplomb by both corporates and politicians. Initiated by the outgoing governments of Jimmy Carter in the US and Jim Callaghan in Britain the memo saw its full fruition under Reaganite America and Thatcherite Britain.
The new beast came to be christened as ‘neo-liberalism’ which was marked by massive privatisation of public services, tax cuts for the super-rich and pulverisation of trade unions. David Harvey points out that the American Supreme Court allowed reforms that treated financial emoluments on the part of corporates towards electoral campaigns as a form of ‘free speech’. The new ideology remained anonymous yet omnipresent as the liberals did not care much about both the wreckage it was causing and the semantic quibble around it. They went with the saccharine approval of the new creed under the name of freedom, democracy and human rights. This happened in blithe disregard of indigenous labour, whose jobs were jeopardised by the mobility of capital and its flight to low-wage countries which would fetch maximum profits.
The system saturated in 2008 when the global economic system came to a standstill, courtesy speculative finance capital and credit bubble formed because of this. The bailout came from the state, not by printing more currencies, an erroneous policy practiced by governments under immense pressure, but from the state exchequer. The hard earned money of the people of America was used to finance bankrupt private banks and speculative institutions. Again the liberals had a cake walk by calling the crisis a tragic repeat of history and absolved themselves of any responsibility.
backlash to this was political in nature. The workers, the middle class, small entrepreneurs and petty merchants organized, in not so progressive a manner, to select the most conservative from the menagerie which included Trump, May and more are to come. Failing to get returns of their hard-work and seeing their hard earned money go down the liberal gutter of bailouts and war, they elected people who promised good days no matter how racist, sexist and obnoxious their public personalities were.
The failure to break away from the EU and the calls for a ‘soft Brexit’ has showcased the systemic compulsions faced by Theresa May. However, the failure of the protectionist demagogues to deliver on their promises should not be a welcome call for the ‘liberal’ agenda to fill the gap; rather a more progressive pro-labour agenda should be in the offing. If the majority of the society is allowed to bleed at the altar of ‘liberalism’ which, in the words of George Monbiot, has meant “freedom for the pike, not for the minnows”, the disgruntled of the society would throw up many surprises not all of which would go down well with the liberals.
The writer is Research Scholar, Department of International Relations, Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University, New Delhi.