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Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism
This book argues that, more than any other factor, it was the encounter with totalitarianism that dissolved the ideals of American progressivism and crystallized the ideals of postwar liberalism. The New Deal began as a revolution in favor of progressive governance--executive-centered and expert-guided. But as David Ciepley shows, by the late 1930s, intellectuals and elites, reacting against the menace of totalitarianism, began to shrink from using state power to guide the economy or foster citizen virtues. All of the more statist governance projects of the New Deal were curtailed or abandoned, regardless of success, and the country placed on a more libertarian-corporatist trajectory, both economically and culturally. In economics, attempts to reorient industry from private profit to public use were halted, and free enterprise was reaffirmed. In politics, the ideal of governance by a strong, independent executive was rejected--along with notions of "central planning," "social control," and state imposition of "values"--and a politics of contending interest groups was embraced. In law, the encounter with totalitarianism brought an end to judicial deference, the embrace of civil rights and civil liberties, and the neutralist reinterpretation, and radicalization, of both. Finally, in culture, the encounter sowed the seeds of our own era--the era of the culture wars--in which traditional America has been mobilized against these liberal legal advances, and against the entire neutralist, "relativist," "secular humanist" reinterpretation of America that accompanies them.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published January 15, 2007
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September 11, 2023
I think this is a 5-star book, one which I will think about a lot and come back to a lot, even though I don't agree with everything in it and it is drastically over-written. That's really my biggest critique, which I'll just get out of the way up front. This book is way too dense and long; it's 326 exceedingly dense pages, including massive block quotes and occassional hammering of the argument into oblivion. I think tougher editing could have gotten this down to maybe 250 and still communicated the same argument. I can't help but think the relative inattention paid to this compelling book is related to these problems.
But, the argument is compelling and challenging; the best argument about this topic that I've seen. The basic pattern of this book is direction-interruption-new direction regarding the history of liberalism. DC argues that the New Deal and Progressive Eras were taking liberal politics, ideas, and economics in a certain direction: toward greater state involvement in the economy, featuring a strong conception of the public good (especially maintaining balance against massive corporate power), toward elite-guided economics and social management in an age of increasing complexity, toward a more communal version of liberalism that was not averse to individual liberty but sought to check it a little bit.
Then we had the "totalitarian encounter," of the 30s and 40s: the challenge, barbarity, and horrors of the Nazi and Soviet system, the world wars, genocides, and then the Cold War. DC argues that this experience made Americans look at themselves and the world differently. They became much more defensive of the individual and fearful that if the state tried to impose or favor any value system it would put society on the road to totalitarianism. They became more skeptical of economic planning and regulation, the potential tyranny of the majority, and even more reflective about authoritarian institutions in the United States, including the Jim Crow South and the Catholic Church.
DC tracks the changes wrought in significant part by this paradigmatic shift in ideas, including in the thought of individual writers and politicians like Lippman or Dewey. At the economic level, Americans became increasingly afraid of direction of the economy by govt, even in voluntarist forms as in much of the New Deal, and became more Keynsian (deficit spending to stimulate consumption coupled with mildly redistributionist tax policy) and, for some, strictly free market. At the political/intellectual level, value-neutrality regarding the state took hold, as did a form of interest group politics that pretended that the state was a mere platform/referee for the competition of interest groups rather than an actor in itself (this, DC argues convincingly, facilitated the "regulatory capture" of govt agencies by business that we have seen in much of the last half -century. The courts, moreover, also shifted in a more value-neutral, individualistic direction for fear that imposing a specific notion of he common good is a first step on the road to totalitarianism.
This was, DC emphasizes, more of an elite than a popular shift, American elites, especially liberals, internalized the horror of the totalitarian experience, and teh resultant form of a more individualistic liberalism, much more than ordinary Americans. It was also, in his argument, a good thing in many ways, helping to increase skepticism about govt oppression while opening Americans' eyes to the many ways that different kinds of Americans faced tyranny in their own institutions.
In a fascinating second-to-last chapter, DC argues that the shift wrought by the totalitarian counter ultimately helped set the table of the modern culture wars, especially in the courts. I'll admit I had trouble following the legal chapters, but I got the gist of it: courts took on a neutralist position that their job wasn't to impose any conception of the good but to protect minorities against the possible tyranny of the majority. They shifted the burden of proof from the individual's desire for expression and autonomy against the state to the state, which had to prove a compelling interest in limiting the individual's rights. Among other things, they saw this a bulwark agaisnt the oppression of the minority and the expansion of the state into people's privacy. However, much of the country did not share this view; they wanted a kind of cultural federalism in which the majority's preferences about marriage, divorce, obscenity, alcohol, drugs, defendents' rights, etc would usually prevail over the individual or the minority. Thus in a wave of cases, local communities found themselves less empowered to shape their social environments or impose a certain way of life through the state or through legislation. They rebelled by turning rightward politically, and the GOP picked up this political football and ran with it toward full-on culture war.
I buy a lot of this argument. The tot encounter undoubtedly had a transformative impact on the AMerican political mind. DC explores that shift in thorough and interesting ways. Moreover, I think he shows how the tot encounter trickled down into parts of our lives you wouldn't expect would be affected. I am more sympathetic to the value-neutralist version of liberalism than he is, but he's right htat liberalism has probably been too much in the shadow of totalitarianism. Not every community standard enforced through law, restriction of obscenity, govt regulation, or exertion of majority will is a first step to totalitarianism. Liberals should, and I think largely are smarter than that.
A tougher question though arises in the conclusion. DC argues that liberalism needs to rediscover notions of the common good and public ethics, not simply to defend interest-group competition, secular neutrality, and individual rights to the teeth. When I look at both neoliberal free marketeers and civil libertarian groups like the ACLU, I see very little concern with the individual's or the minority's impact on society or their responsibility to the rest of the citizenry. As a former ACLU member, I firmly believe that individual rights are sacred and that the individual must have protections against coercion by govt or the rest of society a la JS Mill.
But, as DC pointed out, human beings are not abstractly free but possessing of "situated freedom." We enter the world and for most of our lives are situated in a context and human environment that shapes us, and we would be nothing without that environment: family, community, school, etc. The rational individual citizen of liberal theory is made but not born, which means that environments have to be cultivated that balance goods like freedom and structure rather than favoring one way more than the other. DC is right that the pendulum has shifted too far in one direction, and while I don't agree with him 100%, he's framing the question in the right way, both historically and intellectually. However, I would say that the state (think about the educational system) has not been as value neutral as he says it is, nor have individual communities been without means to shape the context in which people are raised and live their lives; for the most part they have merely lost the ability to coerce outlier, whether those be outliers of race, expression, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. But liberals should think more about what aspects of the individual need protection rather than just having a blanket rule that the individual comes first.
This book is frankly a much more sophisticated, nuanced, and well-developed version of Moyn's argument in his new book on liberalism. They kind of take different paths to the same critique, but DC is much more hesitant to simply cast anti-totalitarian liberalism into the dumpster, and he makes his case in a more thorough (if sometimes exhausting) case. If you have patience and are familiar with reading political theory and rather dense history, this is a rewarding book; but it's not for beginners.
One last thing: I liked that throughout the book my opinion of DC's political viewpoints kept shifting. First I thought he was a bit out on the Left like Moyn, lamenting the fall of the regulatory New Deal State and progressive social programs. By the end I thought he was maybe a liberal Catholic who believed that we needed a correction back toward remoralizing hte public sphere. What this tells me is that DC is critical of all the traditions he encounters but that he also works hard to be a little iconoclastic and to preach to no specific choir.
But, the argument is compelling and challenging; the best argument about this topic that I've seen. The basic pattern of this book is direction-interruption-new direction regarding the history of liberalism. DC argues that the New Deal and Progressive Eras were taking liberal politics, ideas, and economics in a certain direction: toward greater state involvement in the economy, featuring a strong conception of the public good (especially maintaining balance against massive corporate power), toward elite-guided economics and social management in an age of increasing complexity, toward a more communal version of liberalism that was not averse to individual liberty but sought to check it a little bit.
Then we had the "totalitarian encounter," of the 30s and 40s: the challenge, barbarity, and horrors of the Nazi and Soviet system, the world wars, genocides, and then the Cold War. DC argues that this experience made Americans look at themselves and the world differently. They became much more defensive of the individual and fearful that if the state tried to impose or favor any value system it would put society on the road to totalitarianism. They became more skeptical of economic planning and regulation, the potential tyranny of the majority, and even more reflective about authoritarian institutions in the United States, including the Jim Crow South and the Catholic Church.
DC tracks the changes wrought in significant part by this paradigmatic shift in ideas, including in the thought of individual writers and politicians like Lippman or Dewey. At the economic level, Americans became increasingly afraid of direction of the economy by govt, even in voluntarist forms as in much of the New Deal, and became more Keynsian (deficit spending to stimulate consumption coupled with mildly redistributionist tax policy) and, for some, strictly free market. At the political/intellectual level, value-neutrality regarding the state took hold, as did a form of interest group politics that pretended that the state was a mere platform/referee for the competition of interest groups rather than an actor in itself (this, DC argues convincingly, facilitated the "regulatory capture" of govt agencies by business that we have seen in much of the last half -century. The courts, moreover, also shifted in a more value-neutral, individualistic direction for fear that imposing a specific notion of he common good is a first step on the road to totalitarianism.
This was, DC emphasizes, more of an elite than a popular shift, American elites, especially liberals, internalized the horror of the totalitarian experience, and teh resultant form of a more individualistic liberalism, much more than ordinary Americans. It was also, in his argument, a good thing in many ways, helping to increase skepticism about govt oppression while opening Americans' eyes to the many ways that different kinds of Americans faced tyranny in their own institutions.
In a fascinating second-to-last chapter, DC argues that the shift wrought by the totalitarian counter ultimately helped set the table of the modern culture wars, especially in the courts. I'll admit I had trouble following the legal chapters, but I got the gist of it: courts took on a neutralist position that their job wasn't to impose any conception of the good but to protect minorities against the possible tyranny of the majority. They shifted the burden of proof from the individual's desire for expression and autonomy against the state to the state, which had to prove a compelling interest in limiting the individual's rights. Among other things, they saw this a bulwark agaisnt the oppression of the minority and the expansion of the state into people's privacy. However, much of the country did not share this view; they wanted a kind of cultural federalism in which the majority's preferences about marriage, divorce, obscenity, alcohol, drugs, defendents' rights, etc would usually prevail over the individual or the minority. Thus in a wave of cases, local communities found themselves less empowered to shape their social environments or impose a certain way of life through the state or through legislation. They rebelled by turning rightward politically, and the GOP picked up this political football and ran with it toward full-on culture war.
I buy a lot of this argument. The tot encounter undoubtedly had a transformative impact on the AMerican political mind. DC explores that shift in thorough and interesting ways. Moreover, I think he shows how the tot encounter trickled down into parts of our lives you wouldn't expect would be affected. I am more sympathetic to the value-neutralist version of liberalism than he is, but he's right htat liberalism has probably been too much in the shadow of totalitarianism. Not every community standard enforced through law, restriction of obscenity, govt regulation, or exertion of majority will is a first step to totalitarianism. Liberals should, and I think largely are smarter than that.
A tougher question though arises in the conclusion. DC argues that liberalism needs to rediscover notions of the common good and public ethics, not simply to defend interest-group competition, secular neutrality, and individual rights to the teeth. When I look at both neoliberal free marketeers and civil libertarian groups like the ACLU, I see very little concern with the individual's or the minority's impact on society or their responsibility to the rest of the citizenry. As a former ACLU member, I firmly believe that individual rights are sacred and that the individual must have protections against coercion by govt or the rest of society a la JS Mill.
But, as DC pointed out, human beings are not abstractly free but possessing of "situated freedom." We enter the world and for most of our lives are situated in a context and human environment that shapes us, and we would be nothing without that environment: family, community, school, etc. The rational individual citizen of liberal theory is made but not born, which means that environments have to be cultivated that balance goods like freedom and structure rather than favoring one way more than the other. DC is right that the pendulum has shifted too far in one direction, and while I don't agree with him 100%, he's framing the question in the right way, both historically and intellectually. However, I would say that the state (think about the educational system) has not been as value neutral as he says it is, nor have individual communities been without means to shape the context in which people are raised and live their lives; for the most part they have merely lost the ability to coerce outlier, whether those be outliers of race, expression, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. But liberals should think more about what aspects of the individual need protection rather than just having a blanket rule that the individual comes first.
This book is frankly a much more sophisticated, nuanced, and well-developed version of Moyn's argument in his new book on liberalism. They kind of take different paths to the same critique, but DC is much more hesitant to simply cast anti-totalitarian liberalism into the dumpster, and he makes his case in a more thorough (if sometimes exhausting) case. If you have patience and are familiar with reading political theory and rather dense history, this is a rewarding book; but it's not for beginners.
One last thing: I liked that throughout the book my opinion of DC's political viewpoints kept shifting. First I thought he was a bit out on the Left like Moyn, lamenting the fall of the regulatory New Deal State and progressive social programs. By the end I thought he was maybe a liberal Catholic who believed that we needed a correction back toward remoralizing hte public sphere. What this tells me is that DC is critical of all the traditions he encounters but that he also works hard to be a little iconoclastic and to preach to no specific choir.
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