Liberalism must revive itself before it’s too late

The 21st century has been a deflating one for liberals. Politicians are loth to offer a ringing endorsement of free trade, or of the rules-based international order built from the wreckage of the second world war. Free expression and the sanctity of the individual are under attack from both the strongmen of the right and the identity-politics-fuelled left. As for unfettered markets, defending them became less popular after the worst financial crisis for generations struck in 2007.

And yet, as Adrian Wooldridge, a columnist at Bloomberg and former Economist journalist, argues, liberalism forged the modern world. It was born as three revolutions in the 18th century—American, French and industrial—swept through Western societies and turbocharged the economic growth that followed. Early liberals set out a rich philosophy designed for a world in flux: “the belief that society starts with the individual rather than the collective, that power is so dangerous that it needs to be restrained, that truth can be striven for only through open discussion”. Modern liberals have lost sight of these principles. They must urgently rediscover them or face “illiberal anarchy”.

The Economist has been liberalism’s house journal since 1843, so it is perhaps no surprise that this reviewer (who did not work directly with the author) found his sweeping account enthralling. “Centrists of the World Unite!” proceeds at breakneck pace, starting with the 15th century. Readers meet Erasmus urging kings to rule by honour and sincerity (rather than Machiavellian fear), Hobbes extolling the importance of the individual and Montesquieu warning of the dangers of concentrated power. Just as history sped up in the revolutionary 18th century, so does the author’s narrative, rattling through all the big liberal thinkers in 130 pages.

It is, in truth, too much of a whistle-stop tour: this is a rare book that would have benefited from being longer. John Stuart Mill rightly gets the most space, and even that is barely a chapter’s-worth. Mr Wooldridge writes fascinatingly about how liberalism’s founders fought to remove “barriers to dynamism”, how their successors grappled with the meaning of freedom and how fiercely liberals themselves have criticised their own creed.

But the tour is quick, because the book’s focus is how to chart a course for renewal. Today’s liberals have splintered into factions that betray the cause, Mr Wooldridge writes. Left-wingers are so eager to settle group injustices (against black people, for instance) that they have turned against meritocracy—one of the most powerful ideas of the modern era. Market fundamentalists obsess over the narrow freedom to act as one pleases rather than avoiding harming others. The Davos class of “managerial liberals” ranks ideological questions far below their most important one: “How can I remain in charge?”

Thank goodness, then, for liberalism’s “extraordinary ability to regenerate itself”. Mr Wooldridge is not shy with prescriptions to help it do so. Liberals must move “simultaneously to the left and the right”, he writes. They need to recognise that “business is a good servant but a bad master” and should crack down on rent-seeking, tax-dodging and concentrations of corporate power. Their rightward shift must highlight the importance of “excellence or greatness in both the arts and in human behaviour” and of the “civilising role of authority”. Liberals of all stripes need to head off populists by taking the issues they promise disingenuously to fix—uncontrolled immigration, say, or urban dysfunction—more seriously.

It is a bracing manifesto. Liberalism has risked becoming a “fossilised orthodoxy” before, at the turn of the 20th century, only for a new generation of liberals to revive it. Two world wars and the Depression followed nevertheless. War now stalks the world again. It is in urgent need of a philosophy that seeks to honour individuals, constrain power and resolve differences through discussion rather than violence. ■