Liberalism versus Conservatism in the USA

Can we talk a bit more this week about liberalism, classical liberalism, neoliberalism, and conservatism in the context of US political discourse? I know I do it a lot, but not sure I’ve done a storm recently, and I have a few additional thoughts on the matter.

One thing that might help is to consider that 18th century anti-monarchical “classical liberalism” had a political component, democracy, and an economic component, markets. Equivocation on the term “liberal” as it applies to those two components is I suppose a common source of confusion. We’re not fighting monarchism again just yet. We have a democracy of sorts. And we commonly use markets of sorts. Political discourse in the USA has long been about the interaction of those two: democratic government and markets. It’s no longer about the historical artifact “classical liberalism.” The economic, markets, element of “classical liberalism” is what leads some modern US conservatives to call themselves “classical liberals” or “true” liberals or what have you. That’s a rhetorical word game that seeks to suppress the real issues between modern US liberalism and conservatism.

In terms of real issues, modern US liberalism is all about the political component of “classical liberalism,” democracy, and specifically how it interacts with economic policy, markets, and so on. US conservatism is all about the economic component of “classical liberalism,” all about markets. US liberals see economic systems as created by and properly responsive to democracy, so responsive to voters providing normative inputs on economic values, objectives, goals, evaluation, policy. US conservatives see markets as sacrosanct and are all about keeping voters, democracy out of it. Formerly, both sides accepted democracy as the political mechanism, so the debate between liberals and conservatives was all about economics, markets. In general, liberals perceived some issues with our economic system conservatives did not, and they wanted to use democracy to address those issues. By “economic systems” I mean here broadly speaking the resolving of interpersonal conflicts of preferences as over goods, services, scarce resources, so systems for allocating or distributing resources, which might involve the use of economic power in markets or various other systems. Liberals argued for activist democratic government expressing voters’ normative, ethical, moral views on economics including via regulation, market interventions, alternatives. Conservatives argued for “small” or “inactive” democratic government that did little or nothing beyond setting up markets.

Recently, of course, their views have diverged to a greater degree. Liberals have remained where they have long been, arguing voters should be able to use democracy to express economic values, and expressing their own typically “left” values as well. However, conservatives have moved to the right. Whereas formerly conservatives were willing to make their case to voters, accept the results, modern conservatives have taken the anti-democracy sentiments latent in their market utopianism and moved on to trying to undermine, manipulate, or end democratic government. Modern conservatives have various views giving rise to anti-democracy sentiment running from activist “crony capitalist” fascism with a deal making boss to authoritarian conservative government that does little but enforce conservative economic values and keep other people out of it. Modern conservatives play a lot with utopian anarchism (rhetorically useful for ending democracy) and fake anarchism / crypto-fascism / “libertarianism” as far as promoting the idea small, inactive government that does nothing but express conservative economic values is like no government at all. Then, of course, there are conservative theocratists as Christo-fascists who go beyond secular market utopianism to imbue markets with divine attributes or provenance and profess to want to keep democratic government out of it on that account.

The final wrinkle, which I’ve discussed before, and often, but let’s do it here as well just to complete the set, is this business about “neoliberalism,” which creates problems because of the ambiguous nature of the “neo” playing off the formerly mentioned issues with the word “liberal.” One take on the “neo” in “neoliberalism” is that it is new as in resurgent, which makes it resurgent (classical) “liberalism,” which if one focuses on the market component makes “neoliberalism” into “resurgent US conservatism.” An entirely different take on the “neo” in “neoliberalism” is that it means new as in changed, revised, reformed, in which case it becomes revised liberalism and specifically US liberalism revised to become, as far as economics at least, conservatism, US liberalism revised to become its opposite. In both formulations, “neoliberalism” ends up meaning US conservatism; however, agreement at that level masks underlying confusion at the level of the term “liberal” by which for some a “neoliberal” is also a “liberal,” while for others a “neoliberal” is the opposite of a “liberal.” I have long argued interpreting “neo” to mean revised, reformed, changed US “liberalism” makes a great deal more sense than interpreting it to mean “resurgent” because it was historically first applied to erstwhile US liberals circa 1980s, while economic conservatism long pre-dates that era. Also, of course, because the resurgent interpretation of “neo” brings up the issues I mentioned earlier relating to trying to apply the historical combined political and economic concept of 18th century anti-monarchical “classical liberalism” to modern political issues and controversies.

My own views? I’m a (US) liberal. I support democracy including the right guaranteed by the US Constitution of voters to register their normative views on economic values, objectives, policies. I myself have what would likely be generally considered “left” economic values and I argue for those. However, I’m not trying to set myself up as ruler of the world, and if voters use democracy to demand something else, then so be it. I’ll continue to argue my positions, of course. I oppose conservatism formerly for its flawed take on economics and now especially also its opposition to democracy.

Liberals, Neoliberals, And Democrats

Maybe we can talk this week about liberals, neoliberals, Democrats, and the way some real or fake “leftists” promote anti-democracy right wing fascist and theocratist causes, act as their tools, useful idiots. I’ve said some already, but let’s do it in one place, shall we?

I’ll discuss the issue here from an economic perspective. Back when basically everyone in the USA supported democracy, the US Constitution, “liberalism” in the USA as far as economics basically meant the opposite of the simplistic market utopianism of “conservative” economics. Safety and health regulations, public education, New Deal policies as social security and medicare, Keynesian macroeconomics, all that sort, were “liberal.” It basically just meant supporting democratic government involving itself in the economy to reflect voters’ normative or ethical views. The opposite of traditional American progressive, democratic leftist liberalism as far as economics was “conservatism,” which argued democratic government has no business “interfering with” or “distorting” markets, the economy, and proposed democratic government should be small, weak, inactive.

Famously, in the 1980s, in response to local conditions, the traditional false, simplistic rhetoric of bad economics in the conservative style and its market utopianism became so dominant many erstwhile liberals threw in the towel to adopt conservative economics to become “neoliberals.” That Grand Coalition of economic conservatives in the Republican Party and economic “neoliberals” (conservatives) in the Democratic Party was unchallenged for years and led to the impression there was really no difference as far as economics between the two parties, it was really a “uni-party.” Recently, liberal economics has been staging a bit of comeback and the rhetoric of bad economics in the conservative style, although still dominant, may be starting to lose its potency, which has led some conservatives to see an impending crisis and driven them away from democracy toward fascism. With the movement of conservatives from promoting small, weak, inactive democratic government to promoting no democratic government at all, liberalism has come to mean not only the rejection of market utopianism, but simply the belief government should reflect the views of the voters. Thus, it now makes sense to talk about liberalism as simply the view voters in a democracy should be able to provide normative inputs on economic policy, goals, objectives, and so on, whatever they may be. And then a liberal left that adds support for “leftist” economic ideas, values, policies.

The ongoing struggle between conservatives and liberals in the USA involves some interesting issues in rhetoric or terminology. My topic today is the insistence of some “leftists” to address issues with conservative economics entirely in their adopted or reflected expression in “neoliberalism.” The reason it matters rhetorically is that the distinction between liberal and neoliberal is lost on many in the USA now (and indeed the words are used subtly differently in the UK and elsewhere), and some in the USA seem now to suppose “neoliberalism” is “liberalism.” The confusion hangs on the archaic term “classical liberalism,” which is basically now a misleading, archaic, and rather twee name for US “conservatism,” and ambiguity in the English language between “neo” or new referring to new as changed, different or new as the same but resurgent. This allows “conservatism” to fly undefined and under the radar for many, who regardless of whether they’re opposed to progressive, democratic leftist ideas or their opposite, right wing market utopianism, rush to support Republicans fighting oxymoronic (in the US) “liberalism / neoliberalism.” Some now seem to suppose this oxymoronic “liberalism / neoliberalism” dominates the Democratic Party, which leads them to support the Republican Party, regardless of whether they support or oppose the traditional conservative economics that has long been the province of Republican Party. The resulting ignorance among voters about “conservative” economics has been remarked upon by many traditional conservatives and has led to Republicans opposing democratic government not only in favor of market utopianism but also corporatist plutocratic fascism / “crony capitalism.” At a somewhat more advanced level are those who perceive differences between neoliberals and liberals, but suppose liberals rather than neoliberals have dominated the Democratic Party for years thus again confusing liberal policy with neoliberal to oppose the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. In this context, it’s easy to see how anti-liberal, anti-Democratic, ostensible “leftists” function as tools of right wing, conservative fascists and theocratists. On the one had, conservatives tout various iterations of “conservative” economic views and support Republicans in a positive sense. On the other hand, anti-liberal, anti-Democratic “leftists” ignore conservatives entirely and spend their time attacking liberals and Democrats, thus helping the Republican Party in the negative sense. It’s why one supposes conservatives are quite happy to hear people discussing “neoliberals.” 

My recommendations: talk about “neoliberal” economic views as “conservative” or maybe “conservative / neoliberal,” acknowledge and support the liberal wing’s efforts to regain influence in the Democratic Party, acknowledge Republicans don’t have a liberal wing and the parties aren’t the same. If you suppose yourself a “leftist,” but you spend all day attacking liberals and Democrats, literally the only other people in our political scene who accept voters discussing leftist economic ideas, values, views, and may even sometimes endorse them, consider if it’s the best use of your time.