Liberalism Is Not Enough

On both ends of the political spectrum, it seems liberalism has become démodé. From the traditionalist right, R. R. Reno of First Things proclaims, "[w]e're afflicted by a liberal monoculture" characterized by a "double-pronged project of cultural and economic deregulation" that has eroded the solidarity needed to hold society together. From the left, Jacobin's Nicole Aschoff criticizes what she sees as the liberal policies of "globalization, deregulated financial markets, [and] massive tax giveaways to big business and the rich" for creating a great "chasm" of inequality between "elites" and "ordinary people."

Central to liberalism is the notion of liberty as freedom from constraint: the freedom to act according to one's own conception of the good without impinging on others' freedom to do the same. Accordingly, liberalism understands politics in procedural terms — as the neutral weighing of competing private interests without tipping the scales in favor of any one particular ideal. It is thus no coincidence that such distinct contemporary alternatives to liberalism as nationalism and socialism seek to fill the substantive void by emphasizing, in differing ways and to varying degrees, the importance of social cohesion over freedom of choice, the implausibility or undesirability of a morally neutral state, and the need to denounce the corrupt bargain between political and corporate elites.

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