Liberalism isn’t perfect or historically innocent, but it’s the most practical way of organizing power for social change—it’s also inevitable and self-corrects through continued progress—there’s a Trumpism DA to any alternative

Those of us who consider ourselves “left liberals” have expressed particular alarm about the symbolic and practical dangers posed by leaders such as Donald Trump and his supporters. To name but a few: mass rallies denouncing “the liberal media”; inciting and sometimes enacting violence against critics or protestors; calling for the imprisonment of political adversaries; racist and xenophobic rhetoric invoked to support Muslim bans, border walls, and mass deportations; conspiracy-mongering attacks on career civil servants as agents of “the deep state,” and on journalists as “enem[ies] of the American people”; and orchestrated campaigns of lying and disinformation under the banner of speaking “truth” directly to the people and opposing “fake news.” In many ways, these tactics and actions are all too reminiscent of the “origins of totalitarianism” discussed by Hannah Arendt in her 1951 classic of that title. To note this is not to deny the profound differences between the global crises of 1914–1945 and today. But it is to register profound fear for the future of liberal democracy.

Colleagues further to my left have been critical, sometimes harshly, of this liberal response. They insist that Trump is not quite so dangerous, and that the dangers he does pose are largely expressions of deeper tendencies of neoliberalism that require more fundamental challenge. It thus makes little sense, they argue, for the left to reflexively defend liberal democracy— liberal democracy itself is the problem, and the solution is its transformation. While tactically these arguments track the 2016 debates between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, they also run deeper. Some on the left—whether enthusiastic Bernie supporters, or unenthusiastic supporters who nonetheless saw his candidacy as an opening—reviled Clinton for her neoliberalism, and could not bring themselves to vote for her even once she won the Democratic nomination. They argued that the threat posed by Trump was overstated since both parties are oligarchical and capitalist (they are), and thus essentially similar (they are not). This contingent believed that the real danger is not Trumpism but the corruption, hypocrisy, inequality, and violence plaguing liberal democracy itself.

To be clear, the majority of Sanders supporters did vote for Clinton in the general election. Moreover, I have no interest in “blaming” people with such convictions for Clinton’s defeat, however they voted (and in a liberal democracy each individual has the fundamental right to vote as he or she chooses). Further, many Sanders activists have been involved in important long-term organizing efforts that are in no way reducible to the terms of a single election. At the same time, in the debates about the election and since Trump’s inauguration, there have been serious differences of opinion between those who are greatly alarmed by Trumpism and who regard the defense of liberal democracy as an urgent imperative, and those who regard it as nothing more than a symptom of a deeper and more fundamental crisis. “Socialism or barbarism” is a slogan rarely heard. But something like it seems to represent the logic of an anti-liberal position with real traction on the left.

It is important to acknowledge that what we call “liberal democracy” is a complex, novel, imperfect, and ultimately fragile form of politics, created after the Second World War through an accommodation between liberalism and democracy that was neither inevitable nor innocent. It required the buyin of social democratic and Christian democratic movements and parties; it relied on the unique conditions of postwar growth, class compromise, and Cold War “vital center” anticommunism; and it incorporated from the start some profoundly illiberal policy commitments (the national security state, post-colonial counter-insurgency, an uncritical embrace of “modernization,” and compromises with racial and gender inequality, to name a few). This regime was flawed from the start: it was already in crisis by 1965, and much of the politics of the past sixty years can be seen as an intensification of this crisis. Such an arrangement hardly represents a “riddle of history solved.”

Yet liberal democracy—in spite of its corruptions, failings, and complicity with injustice—represents the most practical and normatively legitimate way of organizing political power at the level of the nation-state. And every effort to install an alternative has resulted in disaster.

Liberal democracy is both limited and precarious. And simple appeals to liberal values are insufficient, either to defend liberal democracy under siege, or to further advance the causes of social justice and deepen democracy. For this reason, I disagree with self-identified liberal democrats who regard populism in any form as a danger to liberal democracy. I would instead agree with those such as Chantal Mouffe and Étienne Balibar, who argue that new forms of left populism and new left movements and parties (exemplified by Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, and Demos in Romania) are important to advance the cause of social justice, to counter the rise of right-wing populism, and thus to defend liberal democracy itself.

At the same time, I believe that calls to unambiguously embrace a new left populism, or to declare one’s goal to be socialism (or for some, even communism) are seriously misguided, at least for those who take liberal values seriously. There are two reasons why.

The first is broadly political: because a new socialist or left populist hegemony faces profound and probably insuperable obstacles, and these are not gainsaid by the obvious failings of capitalism. Marx was simply wrong when he declared that “Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve.” And the fact that capitalism is the source of profound harm to social justice and environmental sustainability does not mean that there is any obvious way to “solve,” rather than simply to remedy, these harms.

In their recent Jacobin piece “Social Democracy Is Good. But Not Good Enough.” Joseph Schwartz and Bhaskar Sunkara take issue with recent advocacy of liberal versions of socialism. They argue that “history shows us that achieving a stable welfare state while leaving capital’s power over the economy largely intact is itself far from viable. Even if we wanted to stop at socialism within capitalism, it’s not clear that we could.” But it is much less clear that it is possible to institute a wholesale socialist transformation. And, as Schwartz and Sunkara themselves concede: “To chart a different course, we would need a militant labor movement and a mass socialist presence strengthened by accumulated victories, looking to not merely tame but overcome capitalism.” But such a socialist mass politics is rather unlikely given the current forms of social and economic life, which differ dramatically from the forms of industrialism that gave birth to the modern socialist movement in the mid-nineteenth century.

“Post-Fordist” forms of flexible accumulation, automation, neoliberal forms of consumerism, new digital means of communication, new forms of “liquid modernity”—such developments have promoted new forms of inequality, but they have also eroded the social, cultural, and economic bases of working-class formation that grounded socialist politics in the past. In countries such as the United States, there is no mass proletariat to mobilize or organize. And while there is a working class, not many of the individuals inhabiting this class regard wage-labor as the defining feature of their experience or identity under capitalism.

In fact, a range of struggles for recognition now flourish in real tension with class politics—including civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights. Right-wing populism represents a powerful backlash against these struggles that has successfully garnered substantial white working-class support. The identities of many members of the white working class are deeply and profoundly constituted by sexism and resentment toward immigrants and people of color in ways that make them poor targets for socialist advocacy.

It does not follow from this that socialist political organizing ought to be disparaged. But it does follow that left liberals have every reason to approach the aspiration to transcend capitalism, and liberal democracy, with skepticism. And so, when socialist colleagues challenge us from the left, insisting that we “reify” liberal democracy and fail to understand the “real” sources of our difficulties, we have every reason to question who exactly is doing the reifying.

The second reason to keep a liberal distance from invocations of socialist transformation relates to questions of ethical and political judgment. Even if one were to believe that the only way to defend liberal democracy and to defeat the forces of the right is to join the struggle for a more radical challenge to capitalism itself, this would not mitigate some very difficult and consequential political choices that present themselves in the here and now.

Thus after Hillary Clinton was nominated, many Sanders supporters who sincerely believed that something more radical than Clintonism was necessary were faced with a stark choice: on the one hand, voting for and supporting Clinton, and, on the other hand, refusing to support Clinton, by abstaining or supporting Jill Stein, and thus making it more likely that Donald Trump would be elected. To support Clinton in this context was not to repudiate Sanders or the importance of the political “revolution” he led. It was simply to acknowledge that the danger to liberal democracy represented by Trump was too great—and that neoliberalism with a human face is always to be preferred to right-wing authoritarianism. A similar dilemma presented itself to many French leftists in the May 2017 presidential elections. During the first round, a number of center and left candidates decided to run, including left socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, along with Marine Le Pen of the right-wing National Front. But in the runoff, the choice was stark: support Emmanuel Macron against Le Pen, on the grounds that the danger from the right must be averted, or refuse to do so, on the grounds that Macron is a neoliberal. Yanis Varoufakis, self-described “erratic Marxist” and former Greek Finance Minister, explained the stakes in Project Syndicate: Progressives have good reason to be angry with a liberal establishment that feels comfortable with Macron. . . . Moreover, it is not hard to identify with the French left’s feeling that the liberal establishment is getting its comeuppance with Le Pen’s rise. . . . But the decision of many leftists to maintain an equal distance between Macron and Le Pen is inexcusable. There are two reasons for this. First, the imperative to oppose racism trumps opposition to neoliberal policies. . . . Just like in the 1940s, we have a duty to ensure that the state’s monopoly over the legitimate use of violence is not controlled by those who harbor violent sentiments toward the foreigner, the cultural or sexual minority member, the “other.” . . . But there is a second reason for backing Macron. . . . My disagreements with Macron are legion. . . . [yet] I support Macron . . . [for I] refuse to be part of a generation of leftists responsible for allowing a fascist and racist to win the French presidency. Naturally, if Macron wins and becomes merely another functionary of Europe’s deep establishment, my comrades and I will oppose him no less energetically than we are—or should be—opposing Le Pen now.

Yet there are those on the left who view the neoliberal as no less of a threat than the neo-fascist. The philosopher Slavoj Žižek, for example, refused to support Macron against Le Pen, echoing a stance he had taken in the Clinton-Trump contest. Similar sentiments have been expressed by the scholar Nancy Fraser, a harsh critic of Clinton. Like Žižek, Fraser insists that “far from being the antidote to fascism, (neo)liberalism is its partner in crime. . . . the left should refuse the choice between progressive neoliberalism and reactionary populism.”

But there are times when such a choice is necessary, and making the right choice is not a form of capitulation but political responsibility. The making of such a choice does not preclude other choices as well, and it makes perfect sense to say “I support this candidate or policy now, when the alternative is much worse, at the same time that I will continue to work for a future in which better choices are available.”

And so on May 15, 2017, shortly after Macron’s victory, Varoufakis, as promised, published a follow-up: “Congratulations, President Macron—Now We Oppose You.” There may be a vantage point from which it makes sense to denounce Varoufakis for refusing to refuse the choice between “progressive neoliberalism and reactionary populism.” But it is a vantage point from which the fate of liberal democracy, with its civil liberties, ethnic and religious tolerance, and political pluralism—and the fate of those constituencies who need these very things to survive—would seem to matter all too little. As Varoufakis stated in another op-ed for Le Monde, “Of course we all wish, at least those of us on the left, that the French electoral system were not binary. But it is. And given that it is, I refuse to be part of a generation of European progressives who could have stopped Marine Le Pen from winning France’s Presidency but didn’t.” Varoufakis describes the refusal of this choice as “scandalous.” To choose against right-wing authoritarianism is to put liberal democracy first, and to treat it not as the end, but as an essential means of any ends worth pursuing.

The questions of means and ends raised by such electoral choices are even more pressing when it comes to another set of tactics supported by some on the left—tactics of sometimes violent direct action represented by antifa. Natasha Lennard explained in the Nation last August that “the antifascist project is not one of asking for better statutes or a reconfiguration of rights. . . . antifa is a promise to neo-Nazis and their bedfellows that we will confront them in the streets; we will expose them online and inform their place of employ.” She makes clear that such a politics has little regard for the discourse of human rights or the rule of law. Last summer, Lennard also pursued this anti-liberal theme in Dissent: Time and again in recent months I have seen political writers apoplectic over alleged rips in the social contract, as wrought by Trump, anti-immigrant policy, or austerity, or any number of political plagues. The liberal response has been outrage and disbelief that the state can fall so far from its alleged foundation as a contract forged by the will of equal pledgers. . . . Calling upon some mythic social contract to deliver us from evil is not just futile, it’s downright religious, as Nietzsche would see it. Liberal outrage peddles Christian morality in a world where God is dead, and we have killed him. . . . Power determines which narratives about reality get to count as truth. Recognizing this is a political necessity for those who would challenge the Trumpian Weltanschauung.” Antifa historian and organizer Mark Bray similarly writes that “anti-fascism is an illiberal politics of social revolutionism applied to fighting the Far Right, not only literal fascists [emphasis added].” The roots of antifa lie in the most radical forms of anarchism. As the journalist Chris Hedges (and also Noam Chomsky) have argued, “The focus on street violence diverts activists from the far less glamorous building of relationships and alternative institutions and community organizing that alone will make effective resistance possible.” Moreover, antifa rhetoric, like the “alt right” and neo-Nazi rhetoric it despises, is Manichean. Instead of efforts to forge broad coalitions capable of defeating right-wing authoritarians at the ballot box, antifa tactics promote cycles of recrimination, giving public credibility to right-wing authoritarians, such as Trump, who valorize police brutality and claim to represent “law and order.” There is a long history of Manichean “friend/enemy” thinking on the left, represented by polemics such as Lenin’s 1918 “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky” and Trotsky’s 1938 Their Morals and Ours. It was, in part, to counter such thinking that Dissent magazine was founded. That generation of democratic socialists, shaken by the experiences of Stalinism, totalitarianism, genocide, and world war, and hemmed in by McCarthyism and what Irving Howe called a deadening “age of conformity,” created a journal committed to a critical and liberal version of socialism centering on the importance of vigorous disagreement. In its sixty-four years, Dissent has experienced generational changes and featured many important debates. But at no time since the journal’s founding has the very existence of liberal democracy seemed more in danger.

The illiberal forces on the rise threaten to reverse every important achievement, however limited, of the past five decades of liberal democracy. These achievements include reproductive freedom and domestic violence legislation; environmental and workplace health and safety regulation; civil rights and voting rights enforcement; moderate forms of consumer protection; and press freedom and protection against censorship. All deserve to be defended, not because of their role in advancing us toward a future beyond capitalism, but because they represent real improvements in our lives. The fear-mongering, repression, and evisceration of public criticism promoted by right-wing populism diminish democratic citizenship for everyone. They are harmful to left organizing and to anyone who believes in defending political freedom. Resisting these assaults on liberal democracy through the political means made available by liberal democracy is an urgent task. This does not prevent one from also seeking to build a movement beyond “resistance.” But resistance is important work in its own right and, for many of us, it is the work that is currently most important.

Sarah Leonard, a Dissent editor-at-large and former editor at the Nation, recently remarked about the uncertainties of liberals: The problem with many prominent representatives of liberalism today . . . is that they don’t seem to know which side they’re on. Say Bernie, vote Hillary; say universal health care, but condemn its advocacy; say electable, lose everywhere; say you’ll don sneakers to walk the picket line, don’t show up. The name of my desire is socialism; do liberals know the name of theirs? This reluctance to pick “a side” that disturbs Leonard—which I prefer to describe as ambivalence—is real, and while it can be bridged, I doubt it can be eliminated. For to be a left liberal is to be troubled by the hesitations and inconsistencies of which Leonard writes but also to believe that a pluralistic politics of freedom in our complex world requires such tribulations. I supported Sanders and voted for him in the Indiana primary. But I doubted he could win the Democratic nomination, much less the general election, and I worried about the harshness with which some of his supporters attacked Clinton, a harshness that has persisted over the past year. I support universal healthcare, and welcome the shift by many important Democratic leaders to support the Sanders plan. Still, I wonder whether the plan itself is viable, and whether it is the most compelling issue on which to mobilize the Democratic Party to electoral victories in 2018 and 2020. Because I so profoundly fear Trumpism, I regard Democratic victories as critical—even if they involve compromises on healthcare and even as they will likely bring disappointments. Am I confused? Am I lacking in conviction? Or am I simply unable to believe there are easy, clear-cut answers to many current political questions?

And so “liberal” works for me as a political identity in a way that “socialist” does not. It places a priority on the civil and political freedoms that make it possible for us to argue about how to challenge injustice and work for greater justice. It furnishes peaceful channels of political participation and contestation that allow for provisional agreements to be reached about how to move forward.

Again, Lennard writes, disparagingly, that: “The liberal response has been outrage and disbelief that the state can fall so far from its alleged foundation as a contract forged by the will of equal pledgers.” But liberals such as myself do not believe that the liberal democratic state was ever founded through an idyllic process of egalitarian consent. We believe only that liberal democracy is a flawed outcome of struggle worth defending, and that the idea of free and equal democratic will formation has furnished, and continues to furnish, a powerful normative ideal. There is no “mythic social contract” that can “deliver us from evil.” There is no such contract, and there is no such deliverance. There is only ongoing debate and contestation.

It is perhaps that fundamental commitment to ongoing political contestation that marks the difference between left liberals and those to our left who embrace a more “radical” and often emphatically socialist politics. To note this is not to disparage those to my left. It is to identify points of honest difference as well as commonalities, on which agreements and alliances are possible.

In December 2001, Robert Kuttner published a short piece in the liberal journal he co-edits, the American Prospect, with the self-explanatory title “Why Liberals Need Radicals.” In June 2013, Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin, published a piece in the Nation, entitled “Letter to ‘The Nation’ From a Young Radical.” Sunkara explains why he and his colleagues have embraced a new radicalism with strong Marxist roots. He too makes the case that liberals and radicals need each other. At the same time, from the radical and not the liberal side, Sunkara’s view of this association is rather harsh: “American radicalism has had a complex and at times contradictory association with liberalism. At the peak of the socialist movement, leftists fed off liberal victories. Radicals, in turn, have added coherence and punch to every key liberal struggle and advance of the past century. Such a mutually beneficial alliance could be in the works again. The first step is to smash the existing liberal coalition and rebuild it on a radically different basis.”

I share Sunkara’s belief that now is the time for mutually beneficial connections and alliances between democratic socialists and liberals. But I am rather wary—perhaps for reasons of generational experience—of calls to “smash the existing liberal coalition.” I am skeptical of that “radically different basis.” Most importantly, I believe that the danger posed by the radical right, to the political conditions and elemental life chances of many millions of individuals, makes it important to defend, to build, and to extend the liberal coalition rather than disrupt or destroy it. Because in the struggle between socialism and barbarism, it is barbarism that has the advantage. And because the civil and political freedoms and forms of responsive public policy made possible by liberal democracy are a necessary condition of any social or economic justice worth having.