Why Liberalism Failed

by Patrick J. Deneen

As Polanyi pithily says of this transformation, “laissez-faire was planned.”8 This process was repeated countless times in the history of modern political economy: in efforts to eradicate the medieval guilds, in the enclosure controversy, in state suppression of “Luddites,” in state support for owners over organized labor, and in government efforts to empty the nation’s farmlands via mechanized, industrial farming. It was, in complex ways, an underlying motive during the American Civil War, which, for all its legitimacy in eliminating slavery, also decisively brought the state-backed expansion of a national economic system, opposition to which was forever stained by guilt by association with southern slavery.9 We see its legacy today in the ongoing expansion of global markets through free-trade agreements ardently supported by so-called conservatives, often with the aim of disrupting and ultimately displacing native cultures that might be of concern both to Burkean conservatives and to Marxist-leaning critics of relentless globalization.10 The state’s role in enforcing the existence of a national market has been reinforced in recent years by efforts to roll back various state-based environmental standards—ironically, an activity most ardently embraced by “conservative” Republicans who are otherwise strident defenders of “states’ rights.”