Liberal Delusions

Abstract

The previous chapter dealt with imposing difficulties of winning genuine reforms within an institutionalized corporate-state that diminishes the realm of politics at a time when American society moves further along the path of destructive and costly modes of production, consumption, and lifestyles. In this setting appeals to “realism” and “pragmatism”—historically resonant in American public life—essentially mean capitulation to the dominant interests: recent “solutions” to the global crisis offered by liberal environmentalism fit this very pattern. An expression of early capitalist development, classical liberalism promised a new era of equality, democracy, and prosperity inspired by Enlightenment values, but with the passage of time such expectations were at best partially and unevenly realized. By the late twentieth century the liberal tradition had become associated with a lengthy period of sustained economic growth, yet modern corporate liberalism would be a signpost of sharp inequalities, truncated democracy, and affluence for a shrinking minority, while pushing society toward environmental ruin. In the United States, moreover, the liberal-capitalist predicament was heightened by the expansion of a war economy and a security-state requiring burdensome costs and resources.