Two Books Worth Reading: 'Liberalism as a Way of Life' and 'The Hollow Parties'

I don’t think there’s any question that the Liberal Order is in crisis, but understanding why it’s in crisis isn’t very clear, especially to Liberals who take it for granted. I want to spend the time running up to the election this fall trying to understand this better.

Two new books are useful in thinking this through. The first just released this week entitled Liberalism as a Way of Life by Alexandre Lefebvre and The Hollow Parties released in May by Schlozman and Rosenfeld. I strongly recommend both books if you’re interested in understanding who we are as Americans, how we got here, and where we need to go if the Liberal Order survives the election in November.

Liberalism as a Way of Life is very readable. It’s premise is very similar to the one I’ve been arguing that Liberalism and the Techno-Capitalist Matrix is the air we breathe whether we consider ourselves Liberals or not. He makes his case drawing on Rousseau,  Kant, J.S. Mill, but especially John Rawls, that Liberalism has positive content, i.e., it’s more than just laissez-faire. It’s a humanistic doctrine whose primary ethical tenet is to oppose cruelty and to promote a civic-minded, pluralistic conviviality.

I don’t question the positive characteristics of Liberalism. I question, though, its resources to rise to the challenges that face us because of the ways it is so easily coopted by the TCM. Lefebvre recognizes these limitations. But whatever its limitations, Liberalism is where we start. It defines the terrain through which we must pass, so it’s important to understand what’s best about it as well as what are its, imo fatal, flaws.

In any event, Lefebrve’s book is interesting and well worth reading. He has helpful examples from popular culture to illustrate his points. He uses the Amy Poehler character in Parks and Recreation as an exemplary Liberal in her continuous battle with the illiberalism of her townspeople. He also points to The Good Place as a classic piece of positive Liberalism: it’s the story about how selfish, self-absorbed people, i.e., Illiberal people, become generous and community minded, i.e., Liberal people. The core meaning of Liberal, after all, is to be generous and open, and to become a free, self-legislating individual contributing to the good of his or her community. That’s what the “liberal” arts are supposed to cultivate. So no sane person is against Liberalism if that’s what we mean by it. But is that what Liberalism is in fact?

For lack of space, I’m oversimplifying here. I think the importance of what he’s saying lies in his trying to provide a non-religious philosophical foundation for something that most Americans of good will take for granted. It may owe a lot to the Christian tradition, but it is agnostic about Christian metaphysical claims. Indeed it is agnostic about all metaphysical claims, which he believes must be constrained to the private sphere. This is the Rawlsian part of his argument, and it’s a serious argument that someone with my commitments must deal with.

The argument I’m making is very similar to his insofar as he’s drawing from a book that inspired his title, Pierre Hadot’s Philosophy as a Way of Life. Hadot was an eminent French scholar of classical philosophy. And he has been enormously important for me in understanding how Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are only secondarily theoreticians. More importantly, they are founders of schools and spiritual communities of learning and soul craft. I had never understood before reading Hadot how much the early Christian monks owed to these schools in providing a model for their way of life.¹ And Lefebvre wants to draw on Hadot’s presentation of these schools as models for defining a Liberal way of life. That’s to be applauded.

I’ll probably have more to say about this later, but the conversation I’d like to have with Lefebvre is about why I think Liberalism fails because of its lack of a metaphysics, and this is why in the long run it cannot withstand the attacks from illiberalism and the TCM that looms ominously behind it. The philosophers and philosophical schools about which Hadot talks all were firmly grounded in a metaphysics and a commitment to the Good, and in the long run I think that ethos must be retrieved in a postmodern key. This was one of the main themes of the Cathedral Lectures. .

Regarding The Hollow Parties, if you don’t have time to read it, I recommend listening to Ezra Klein’s interview with the authors earlier this week on his podcast. I found this book particularly helpful for providing historical context for stuff I knew but didn’t understand the significance of. For years now, I’ve been accusing the Democrats, particularly Bill Clinton and the New Democrats, of political malpractice for embracing the Neoliberalism that lost the Democrats the white working class. It’s clearer to me now that the real problem lies with the hollowing out of the Democratic Party after the McGovern-Fraser reforms made with all the best intentions to democratize the party in the wake of the disastrous 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.

This largely explains why the Democrats became a party dominated by a meritocratic elite that feels no connection to middle America, and why Middle American came increasingly to despise Democrats. But as bad as the results of these reforms were for the Dems, the Republicans copied them, and in their doing so deconstructed the guard rails that made Trump a possibility. There was no party mechanism for the GOP to prevent its extremists from taking over despite what most decent, sane, rank-and-file Republicans cared about. The GOP now is simply an empty bottle that is filled with MAGA crazy juice.

The Hollow Parties is also helpful in identifying six strands in American political party history that in their different combinations constituted the parties since the founding—

1. The Anti-Party Strand—From James Madison and Washington to contemporary technocrats. They hate partisanship and division. They think of themselves, imo naively, as beyond ideology. They want competent elites to run things. Think someone like James Comey and Merrick Garland who in their bending over backwards to avoid the appearance of partisanship ironically created more of it. Overlaps with Policy Reform Strand.

2. The Accomodationist Strand—Party machine politics. Not about policy principles or public interest, but transactional, tit-for-tat politics. Things get done as favors not because there is any overarching public interest. But sometimes the favors are done for people in category 5 who care about the public interest. LBJ understood the accommodationist game and played it effectively in ways that benefited domestic public interest if not particularly well in our foreign affairs interests.

3. The Populist Strand—Us vs. Them politics that focuses its energies through a charismatic leader. Very conflict oriented more than policy oriented. Driven by resentment and grievance. They are “democratic” only in the sense that equality is only recognized by those in their tribal in-group. There was a time when I spoke positively of Populism. No longer.

4. The Capital Strand—Think Wall St. and most corporate CEOs who care about politics only insofar as those elected seek to lower taxes and minimizes regulations. Not averse to having those tax revenues directed toward them in huge government expenditures when it serves their bottom line in govt contracts.

5. The Policy Reform Strand—Seeks to get things done in the public interest. At its worst when manifested in Best and Brightest technocratic arrogance. At its best when it takes what’s best in the accomodationist, radical, and anti-party strands while seeking to ovecome their limitations. Guys like FDR, LBJ, Obama, Bernie Sanders, and even Joe Biden are in their different ways representatives of this strand in its best sense. Is there any question that, whether or not you agree with their particular policy positions, their fundamental commitments are to the broad public interest? It’s hard to think of any recent Republicans who care about the broad public interest in this way. Since the end of Reconstruction, with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower, they almost always served the narrow interests of Capital. They still do, at least so far, with Trump. That’s at least the bet that Capital is making in backing him.

6. The Radical Strand—Single-minded, uncompromising, subversive of existing norms and practices, and usually unsuccessful because of their need for purity that makes it near impossible for them to win majorities. This strand can be successful if it taps into the Populist Strand, however. I think Reagan’s populist appeal largely explains the success of his radical Neoliberal dismantlement of the New Deal Order. But what Reagan started Trump is bringing to a chaotic culmination. In any event, Radicals play an important role in shaking things up when things get stultified. They are not particularly helpful when Chaos is the prevailing zeitgeist. Radicals should never be allowed to have any significant political power, because they always seek to outdo one another in the purity of of their radicality.

I list these out here because they are referred to in the Ezra Klein podcast without providing definition, so it might be helpful in understanding what they’re talking about. And because I’ll probably be using this vocabulary in future posts about the future of the Liberal Order.

The bottom line is that the parties no long longer work, and we need them to work. More on this going forward. Needs to be related to themes I’ve been developing about the Techno-Capitalist Matrix.

Note 1. I write about Hadot in a post entitled “Plato: Habitus as Heuristic”.