The liberal social order is under attack and is no longer the system's victor. Is it necessary to examine our idea of freedom?
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| Berlin, Germany |
The "Iron Curtain" fell over three and a half decades ago, actual socialism failed, and a mood of optimism swept throughout the West. Liberal democracy was now not just the system winner, but - according to certain political scientists - the final stage of history.
The historical development of human civilizations had come to a joyful finish, and the joys of the market economy and parliamentarism would reach the farthest reaches of the globe, ushering in an age of freedom and wealth. Indeed, Western democracy appeared to be a political export success at first.
The post-reunification period's enormous hope has long since given way to complete disappointment. Threats from inside and beyond have intensified, with alternative ideas for society attacking our way of life across the board. The liberal-democratic system has been in profound trouble for a long time.
But how much of the opposition to liberalism stems from within it? What socioeconomic forces and historical legacies contribute to the vulnerability of this ideology? Is it necessary to rewrite the "liberal script" in order to survive the war of the systems?
First and foremost, "liberalism" does not exist, according to Christoph Möllers, Professor of Constitutional Law and Legal Philosophy at the HU. Instead, the "liberal script" is defined by a diverse set of schools of thought, some of which have developed quite divergent perspectives on the fundamental liberal principle of freedom.
Individual and collective liberties have been in tension in the liberal-democratic discourse since the beginning and are continually being rebalanced in societies constructed in this way, adds Möllers.
The "negative freedoms" that safeguard individual people against aggression by the state or other persons are the flames of liberalism. Yet, "positive freedom" is also at work here: A freedom that only exists when one has the wherewithal to exhaust all potential choices. State interventions that give certain chances to all persons are not always viewed as a limitation of freedom, but rather as a prerequisite for it.
Finally, social democracy once saw it as its task to combine such forms of freedom and to ensure, through regulation, that freedom does not degenerate into the (market) freedom of a few against the freedom of the many - but also not to "freedom of the crowd," which ultimately negates the freedom of the individual.
Whatever theoretical models and historical forms liberal thinking has produced, an understanding of freedom that sees freedom more as personal property than as a social condition - as private egoism - has tended to gain the upper hand in the West over the past 40 years, according to Stefan Gosepath, Professor of Philosophy at the Free University.
This was particularly evident during the pandemic: the state-mandated infection prevention measures were viewed as a restriction of freedom rather than a solidarity-based social reaction to an objectively unfree occurrence, with which vulnerable people's freedom was restored via collective action.
According to Möllers, the hyper-individualistic view of freedom of neoliberalism frequently rejects that individual freedom is not something that occurs naturally, but is constantly mediated by society. "There is no such thing as Society," said former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is the argumentative point of a way of thought that sees persons as solitary monads rather than common creatures.
Several sociologists and philosophers believe that the neoliberal government not only ignores society as a fundamental foundation for freedom, but actively decomposes it. As a result, freedom itself is threatened.
Not merely because our awareness degenerates into atomized egoists. But also because some people's excesses of freedom limit the freedom of others. If the richest 1% of the world's population does twice as much climate harm as the lower half of humanity combined, as the 2020 Oxfam research demonstrates, the freedom to release CO2 on a private aircraft takes away the freedom of others to exist at home at all.
For another reason, liberalism tends to break its social foundation: the promise of freedom implicit in it turns out to be hollow for the great majority of people, resulting in disillusionment.
Formal legal-political freedom comes up against factual limits everywhere. The poorer half in our society has never owned anything worth mentioning.
According to the most recent Oxfam research, the richest 1% of the German population acquired a staggering 81% of the country's wealth increase between 2020 and 2021. Yet, if you are wealthy, you have entirely other options for properly exercising your liberties.
The promise to everyone that they can accomplish it, the theoretically boundless potential with a maximum of unequal distribution of opportunity, is what generates the most disappointment. This promise becomes an obligation in late modernity, which, according to sociologist Andreas Reckwitz, only rewards the unusual and extraordinary.
Anybody can do it, and everyone should do it. But, not every child from a low-income family will become a rap sensation or a professional soccer player. Most of them go through the regular biographies of their conventional milieus under duress, which can produce dissatisfaction and rage because everyone should be able to accomplish it.
"In liberalism, discrepancies in income or wealth are frequently explained by the concept of performance," Gosepath explains. Anybody with little has not done enough and is regarded subjectively guilty for being left behind for structural reasons.
The "meritocratic ethos," which holds that authority should be used by the most capable, is sometimes used as a smokescreen by privileged property owners, masking uneven starting conditions. The performance concept not only clashes with the supply and demand principle that characterizes the market economy, insofar as a bad product might outperform a good one on the market.
Meritocracy is also a delusion, because people in our social system begin their lives in various places. This dissatisfaction is especially obvious when it comes to the succession of enormous wealth. Not only must the "liberal script" repair itself with its own means here.
"Liberalism does guarantee a right to property, but how high this property may be in detail is not set out anywhere". Goespath, who considers himself an egalitarian liberal in the tradition of thinker John Rawls, promotes redistribution from top to bottom in the sake of equal freedom for all.
In this regard, the philosopher is akin to Thomas Piketty, the political economy's big star, who wants to fund full employment, a basic income, and a transitory inheritance for all by imposing huge progressive taxes on wealth, inheritance, and income. In an interview, Gosepath stated, "A well-understood liberalism aspires for equal freedom for all."
In any event, Gosepath and Möllers believe that capitalism, particularly the existing property regime, may be challenged from a liberal standpoint. Philosophers such as Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi, on the other hand, feel that (left) liberal critique just scratches the surface and is incapable of resolving capitalism's profound structural flaws.
Whatever one thinks of it, parliamentary democracy is typically an elitist endeavor. Most parliaments sung and sang with a "strong upper-class accent" - which has gotten even stronger in recent decades, as the political scientists Armin Schäfer and Michael Zürn explain in their paper "The Democratic Regression". Nevertheless, for many years, increasing powers have been delegated to "non-majority institutions" such as constitutional courts and central banks.
Both strengthen the sense of having no voice in a democracy. The "checks and balances" of liberalism make sense for preserving civil rights. Yet, illegitimate ownership and the right to endless returns can be obtained in the face of democratic majorities.
Such post-democratic rigidities, the rising disparity between wealthy and poor, socioeconomic uncertainties, and chronically unmet freedom pledges all contribute to widespread discontent in (neo)liberal nations. Furthermore, cultural liberalization - the granting of rights to individuals who were previously disenfranchised - turns those who have long been favored by the liberal system against liberalism.
What about external pressures and the liberal script's dwindling appeal? "The Global North's liberal-democratic governments essentially dictate the international economic order," adds Goespath. This has long been built in such a way that it disadvantages the South.
Aside from the fact that subsidizing European agricultural products, which renders African commodities uncompetitive, is a neocolonial act, colonial past plays a role when Asian or African nations are skeptical of liberalism.
According to Gosepath, the liberal West's success is still predicated on the exploitation of oppressed peoples. "During the colonial era, Africans had to recognize that these promises should not apply to them," says Daniel Eckert, an Africa expert at the HU. His liberal script was always exclusionary and contradictory.
"The desire to widen the notion of political equality is encoded into the liberal script itself," argues Michael Zürn. With the growth of liberalism's concepts, several minority have steadily battled for their freedoms against true liberal states.
The liberal script causes its own issues. It confronts itself because of its socioeconomic dynamics and historical history, making some of its opponents dangerous in the first place. Yet, and this is its greatest strength, it is openly capable of self-criticism. According to Möllers, liberalism can and must think outside itself.
According to Gosepath, communities in which everyone is equally free, substantively and not just officially, and in which individual and social freedom complement each other productively, are attainable. To survive in the war of the systems, the liberal script must change in order to maintain its civilizational history and become substantially more appealing.
The author Christoph David Piorkowski is a German journalist.