The Crisis of Liberalism
After the catastrophe of World War One
intellectuals had become disillusioned with the philosophical beliefs and the
political ideals that we associate with liberal government: Locke’s social contract, natural rights, and Smith’s
Invisible Hand? John Locke had argued that a just society would
offer the most freedom to its citizens while protecting their natural rights.
Adam Smith had argued that free markets create more productive and fair
economic systems by encouraging competition to set wages and prices at their
true levels. In practice, however, bourgeois business interests
dominated liberal government, tipping the playing field to their advantage.
Monopolies exploited laborers by keeping wages at un-naturally low levels.
The ideal of freedom was used to justify the control of capital by an
increasingly small number of powerful people. The Efficacy of Reason and Democracy The philosophes of the Enlightenment had placed
their faith in the ability of social science to engineer a new and better
society. Adam Smith had argued that the competition generated by the pursuit
of self-interest would reward human industry and create a more wealthy and
equitable society. Similarly, liberal political philosophers believed that
the pursuit of individual self-interest would be
moderated by democratic political institutions in which public debate would
lead to rational and peaceful compromise. However, liberal governments failed to deal
decisively with the social consequences of the Industrial Revolution.
Governments did not regulate the violent rise and fall of the world economy;
workers did not receive employment guarantees or a fair share of the profits;
craftspeople lost their livelihoods and struggled to adjust to a new economy
in which their old skills were no longer useful. The lower classes in liberal
societies continued to suffer in terrible living conditions, and their
leaders, doubting that gradual political reforms would ever address the
problems of poverty, turned increasingly to more radical and revolutionary
ideologies. The result: Competition intensified between industrial nations for
control of world markets, and Class Struggle split societies between industrial workers, bourgeois
owners, obsolete craftspeople, obsolete aristocrats, and impatient students
agitating for change. The competition between liberal nation
states for dominance of world trade led to brutal and dehumanizing
imperialist colonialism around the world and an arms race that finally resulted in the
catastrophe of World War I. The Innate Goodness of Humans Nationalist movements had unleashed irrational passions, and the
Great War revealed no limit for man’s capacity for cruelty and violence.
Philosophers like Nietzsche glorified the irrational and mocked the weakness
of Christian morality and liberal compromise. Evolutionary biologists like
Darwin argued that humans were no different in kind than animals engaged in the struggle for survival. Darwin not
only proposed a purely physical origin of mankind, but
he argued that there is no moral dimension to the natural world.
Psychologists like Freud suggested that irrational forces beyond our control
or understanding drive human behavior.
Science’s Promise of a New Utopia Instead
of creating an improved quality of life, the new technologies had created the
modern city which struggled with poverty, pollution and crime. The new
technologies also created weapons of mass destruction: the machine gun,
tanks, poison gas, the submarine, the airplane and,
eventually, the industrialized killing factories of Auschwitz and the threat
of global annihilation represented by the atom bomb. Military leaders used
these weapons indiscriminately, killing not only millions of soldiers but
also millions and millions of civilians. The Rise of New Political
Ideologies
New
political movements on both the left and the right rose to challenge
the legitimacy of liberal governments which could not head off a
worldwide depression during the 1930’s. Fascism (the challenge to liberalism from the political right)
Fascist: The word derives from the Italian word fasces--
the bundle of sticks that a Roman dictator wielded as a symbol of his absolute
power during a time of emergency. The Spread of Fascism
The Roots of Fascism in
Late Romantic Thought Fascists rejected the
Enlightenment belief in reason in favor of the Romantic exaltation of a
vital, creative life force expressed in powerful emotions and in violent
action. They believed that reason enfeebled the will. Unlike earlier
Romantics, the fascists did not believe in the imagination’s power to
liberate the individual; rather they exalted in a national, increasingly racial
identity (the
Volk). Fascists
sought to overthrow impotent parliamentary forms of government with
their mediocre (and aged) leaders who engaged in increasingly futile partisan
debates and were unable to pass legislation to cope with the challenges
of the time. These failed leaders would be replaced by a young, virile
and dynamic generation which possessed the will to take decisive action. The New Nationalism Fascists promoted a new
form of nationalism. As opposed to liberal movements that aimed to secure
individual human rights for all members of society, fascist movements sacrificed political liberty to dreams
of national greatness and the promise of imperial power. Social Darwinists denounced ethnic and cultural minorities (such as
gypsies and Jews) and created a new nationalist cult revering ancestors and
the sacred bond between the people (the Volk) and their national
blood, soil, and mythic past. Fascists were the first
modern politicians to tap the vast potential of mass media to
manipulate the beliefs of the people. They used film, poster art, and huge
mass meetings to promote adulation of the party and its demagogic leader. The Fascist Political
Coalition Fascists formed a
political coalition (frequently glued together with racist ideology) of the
military, the landholding aristocracy, the clergy, and big industrialists.
They sought support among the masses of peasants and the lower middle class
(the petit-bourgeoisie). They found support among those groups that had been
most disturbed by the changing economics of the industrial age. Fascist Anti-Communism Fascists were united by
their fear and hatred of the emerging proletariat. They were able to take
power primarily due to the fear that the Russian Revolution would spread to
Central Europe. The
Fascist Inversion of Enlightenment Beliefs
Marxism (the challenge to
liberalism from the left) Origins of Marxist Thought in Enlightenment
Philosophy Marxist political philosophy grew out of the same core Enlightenment
beliefs from which liberalism originated.
Marxists rejected liberal government’s protection of
individual rights at the expense of social justice. Social rights, the right
to a job, to a decent wage, to a home, to an education, to health care, to a
pension, were far more important to them than the freedoms protected by
Locke's social contract.
Marxists believed that social justice could never be
achieved through reforming the liberal economic system. Only violent
revolution could bring the working class to power and destroy the structure
of capitalism.
Marxists believed that class struggle and violence
were the essential vehicles of social change and progress. Socio-Economic Environment Determines Identity Where liberals believed that the individual could
overcome poverty through education and the development of self-discipline,
Marxists argued that the individual alone could not determine his own
destiny. Real social change could only be achieved through the transformation
of the environment itself. Dialectical Materialism Marxists held to a strictly materialist philosophy. They
rejected all metaphysical and religious idealism. They argued that people
should struggle to change the world, not transcend it. Marxists held that historical progress is not random
but can be understood through rational principles. Marxists believe that existence precedes identity.
Man is defined by the socio-economic environment (not liberal rights, not
national identity, not religious belief, not ethnic culture). Marxists argued that technological advances in the
ways that goods are produced and wealth is distributed drive historical
change. Marxists argued that technological change creates class struggle. New social classes emerge and history proceeds when opposing classes clash.
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