Political Liberalism Was Never Meant For The Masses

The role of liberalism, as so well detailed by Losurdo (Liberalism: A Counter History), was to free the growing bourgeoisie/merchant class from the limitations placed upon them by the sovereign and their state apparatus. That is why property was given the central mythological basis of freedom, because it was that class that was most concerned about constraints upon their usage of their property (which included slaves). In a time when the franchise was limited by property ownership and/or income requirements, the joys of democracy could also be restricted to that class only, and not the hoi polloi. Very much akin to the highly-restricted Greek democracy where those that owned, ruled.

But there was a problem, the masses decided to force themselves into the democratic arena after being used as the battering ram of revolution in Britain, France and the US. The problem for the bourgeoisie was detailed by Ishay Landa (The Apprentice’s Sorcerer: Liberal Tradition And Fascism):

But in the course of the 19th century it became clear that the demand for popular representation is a political weapon that cuts both ways: wielded by the bourgeoisie in the name of the people against the aristocracy, it was effective in bringing about and consolidating bourgeois society. But once “the people” wished to dispense with their bourgeois proxies and speak and act for themselves, demanding, as a necessary first step, that the suffrage be universally extended, popular representation threatened to encroach upon bourgeois prerogatives and interests. After wrestling the economy from the nobility, the bourgeoisie now had to defend it from “the masses”. (p. 21)

This was dealt with in two ways, firstly by sanctifying the rights of property and to separate the economic and the political realms. As the liberal philosopher John Locke insisted, property and capitalist production were not a political arrangement and therefore could not be the subject of political control. Property rights were sacrosanct and inscribed in natural law that could not be adjudicated on by the political realm. Locke was in no way a populist, rather he was an elitist rich man who was happy with labour for children as young as three and wanted criminalization of beggars and vagabonds. He considered that the masses should be kept dumb and obedient, as Landa quotes him on page 27:

Hearing plain commands, is the sure and only course to bring them [the masses] to obedience and practice. The greatest part [the masses] cannot know, and therefore they must believe. (Locke 1824: 146)

Was not this the role of establishment religion, and later fascism? As Landa also notes:

Believe and Obey. Two tenets which came, after all, more than two centuries later, to pertain to “the most well-known of Fascist slogans: Credere Obbedire Comabattere (Believe, Obey, Fight)" (Payne 1996: 215).

The second way was to create institutional blockages that severely curtailed the ability of the masses to express their will through formal democratic means. The myriad of such clever tactics was detailed by Losurdo (Democracy or Bonapartism: Two Centuries of War on Democracy). Gramsci then detailed how a modern ruling class utilizes many different instruments to manipulate and coerce the masses into political acceptance of the status quo power structure; acting against their own interests through a false consciousness backed up with coercion.

The problem for the bourgeoisie is when the masses manage to overcome these obstacles to successfully create their own counter-hegemonic project and start to gain control over the democratic levers of power; overcoming the institutional constraints and rejecting the artificial delineation between the political and the economic. As Landa so well explains, in such a case the liberals can decide to maintain economic liberalism while removing political liberalism, and are quite ready to operate within such an arrangement for extended periods of time if necessary. As Landa notes, the historian Salvemini characterized “Italian fascism as a limited planned economy deferential to capitalism … and underlined the important fact that such economic intervention was scarcely different from that witnessed by other, western economies, whose capitalist pedigree is not doubted” (p. 73). Economic liberalism sans political liberalism, just as with Nazi Germany and fascist Spain.

Only when the masses have been made safe for an elite dominated democracy that will not impinge on the rights of property will political liberalism be re-installed. One only has to look at the dictatorships of South America and South Korea to see how easily economic liberalism can be maintained alongside authoritarian, even fascist, political arrangements. Much of the underlying ideologies of these authoritarian/fascist societies come from a ruling class understanding of liberalism; freedom for the economic ubermensche and subjugation for the economic untermensche. Fascism as just another possible option for the liberal bourgeois oligarchy, with liberal tradition as the “apprentice’s sorcerer” of fascism. The Nazi philosopher Schmitt:

underlined the powerlessness of political liberalism to cope with democracy, specifically mass democracy, and consequently the need to break out of this impasse by recourse to dictatorship, that would establish once and for all who is sovereign, who is the one who can decide on the Ausnahmezustand, the state of emergency (literally: state of exception) … The entire set of fundamental questions raised by Schmitt and the well-known answers he provided, derived from this historical predicament. (p. 167)

Landa then continues to note that:

Far from being a democratic critic of liberal politics. in his analysis of “the crisis of parliamentarianism,” Schmitt displayed striking parallels with the standard, 19th century liberal critique of democratic politics.

The recourse to fascism (see American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis by Hochschild) was the decision made by US President Wilson in 1917 when faced with a population that would not do the ruling class bidding by committing themselves to a war that they did not consider to be their own. It was only after the destruction of the working class leadership of the “wobblies” (Industrial Worker of the World Union) and other socialist groups that it was agreed that the US was again “safe for democracy” and President Harding could roll-back the fascist apparatus put in place by Wilson. In Italy, the Biennio Rosso (two red years) of gains for the masses triggered the bourgeois oligarchy into fully supporting Mussolini’s brown shirt fascists. The same in 1933 in Germany when the oligarchy decided that a strong hand was required against popular agitation and the challenges of the Great Depression. The same in Spain after the masses had seized power for the benefit of the masses. In Britain the Bonapartism of the “National” government, facilitated by the treachery of the Labour leadership, worked. While in the US a new industrial coalition managed to construct a controlled democracy while fending off more radical working class demands during the Great Depression.

From the 1970s onwards, neoliberalism was implemented by the elites across the West. Firstly in the UK and the US, and then in a post-crash Japan, and also facilitated by the deeply undemocratic nature of the European Union power structures. The financial and economic failures of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis only lead to a deepening of neoliberalism within the West. After five decades of neoliberalism and offshoring driven by wage arbitrage, the masses of the Western populations have been significantly immiserated through falling real wages, massive asset price inflation, large cuts to state social services, labour market deregulation, deregulation of the financial system, and increases in corporate concentration.

With the rise of the hyper-competitive and sovereign China, together with greater independence within other nations, the Western elites were faced with a crisis in their ability to extract profits from other nations. While at the same time escalating levels of imports, especially from China, threatened their profitability at home. Their “Hail Mary” play was to trigger a war between Russia and Ukraine which could be used as a pretext to economically and financially crush Russia through sanctions and trigger a friendly regime change in that country. Then the West could return to the mass looting and exploitation of Russia that it had had a free hand to do during the 1990s; with independence movements being supported/created to drive a break up of Russia into more manageable chunks, as with Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The removal of Russia as an ally of China would also greatly strengthen the West with respect to China, facilitating its weakening and opening up to Western control and exploitation.

But things did not work out as planned, with the world outside the West refusing to take part in the destruction of Russia and with Russia showing a much greater level of strength and resilience than the Western elites had assumed. Three years later and Russia remains strong, and is now most certainly on its way to winning the war against Ukraine. At the same time, China has displayed the success of Xi’s focus on technological upgrading by taking the lead on one industry after another. Selling its own brands at home and around the world rather than just making things for Western corporations which take the vast majority of the profits. Russia’s resilience and China’s increasing strength have also facilitated greater and greater levels of rejection of Western pillaging and profiteering in other parts of the world, for example West Africa.

Faced with this new reality of a reducing ability to extract wealth from other nations, and the increasing competitive challenge of Chinese corporations (e.g. the major automakers), the Western oligarchs have to look for new avenues for profit. In an environment made worse by the boomerang effects of the anti-Russia sanctions that have both raised domestic energy prices and forced a retreat of from the lucrative Russian market. So the Western oligarchs have decided to turn the screws even tighter on their own populations through tariffs to lock out foreign competition and raise regressive taxes. With increased military Keynesianism to provide easy profit making activities, and increased authoritarianism to keep an increasingly unhappy population at bay.

An economic liberalism with an increasingly restricted political liberalism, with the rich “donor class” being the true electorate. In extremis, the political liberalism for the demos will be completely removed through a move to outright fascism. This is what Weidel and the AfD are kept in the wings by the German oligarchy for, and the same for Farage and Reform UK, and for Bardella and the National Rally in France. In the US, the issues of illegal immigration and “anti-semitism” are being used as excuses for greater authoritarianism and limitations on free speech. The consolidation of power over time within an “Imperial Presidency” already gives a US president much access to dictatorial style powers.

In contrast to the lies that we are told in the class room, through the media, and by the politicians, liberalism has very little to do with universal suffrage style democracy. Political liberalism is to be reserved for the bourgeoisie, and in the case that it is captured by the masses it can be quickly withdrawn until circumstances have been changed. The masses must be kept ignorant and obedient, taught to believe rather than think through the means of religion and other ideologies, together with the dumbing down of mass political discourse. Significant chunks of society, such as the economy and foreign policy, should also be considered “naturally” off limits for political consideration; e.g. the sanctity of property rights and the “market”. Economic liberalism works wonderfully for the bourgeoisie as long as political liberalism is kept in its “proper” place.