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November 8, 2024 - 6:00pm
Donald Trump’s victory this week demonstrates that classical liberalism is on the decline, according to international relations scholar Francis Fukuyama.
The election “represents a decisive rejection by American voters of liberalism and the particular way that the understanding of a ‘free society’ has evolved since the 1980s”, the political scientist wrote in the Financial Times today. “Donald Trump not only wants to roll back neoliberalism and woke liberalism, but is a major threat to classical liberalism itself.”
Fukuyama is best known for his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, which argued that the triumph of liberal democracy over communism marked the end of conflicts over civilisational models, with Western liberalism projected to serve as the final form of government throughout the world. The 9/11 attacks and the ensuing wars in the Middle East inspired new criticism of Fukuyama’s ideas, as has the rise of populism throughout the West in the past decade.
The public intellectual is a longtime Trump critic, and warned in 2016 that the US was in “one of the most severe political crises I have experienced in my lifetime”, citing Trump’s desire to flout institutional rules. Trump’s first election victory in 2016 seemed like an “aberration”, an impression seemingly confirmed by his loss in 2020, according to Fukuyama’s new article. However, that the American people voted for him once again, “with full knowledge of who Trump was and what he represented”, showed the tides of history are once again turning, the author argued.
In the FT piece, Fukuyama suggested that the previous status quo was giving way to a “new era in US politics and perhaps for the world as a whole”. He attributed this largely to the working-class backlash against neoliberal policies.
From the Eighties onward, according to Fukuyama’s piece, free-market economics ushered in prosperity, particularly for the wealthy, while undermining the working class and strengthening industrial powers outside of the West. Meanwhile, the political Left replaced concern for the working class with an emphasis on a “narrower set of marginalised groups: racial minorities, immigrants, sexual minorities and the like”.
The shift away from liberalism is already making an impact on both major parties. Trump’s strong performance among the working class, including non-white male voters who historically favoured the Democrats, has prompted reflection within the Left-of-centre party, as internal critics argue it needs to lean into economic populism and distance itself from social progressivism. Even in the final months of the campaign, both Kamala Harris and Joe Biden distanced themselves from transgender issues and identity politics, as did down-ballot Democrats in competitive races. Both parties have also come to reject liberal immigration policies as American voters warm up to closed borders and mass deportations.
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SubscribeLiberalism failed. Liberalism’s successes were based on a bedrock of strong nations, Western civilization, and Judeo-Christian values.
Of course our elites ignored that completely and did everything they could to erode those things, wanted to replace nation, community, local culture, family and faith with atomized secular individuals living in a globalized, bureaucratized, homogenized world. The Right and the Left elites were both complicit.
Once the transformation went too far, liberalism can’t work, and we’re descending into tribalism.
Yoram Hazony is good on the bitter fruits of Enlightenment over-reach.
Most of this is nonsense. The west abandoned liberalism long ago, probably right around the time of his first book. If liberalism is defined in the narrow terms of free trade and tariffs, I suppose there’s a case to be made that Trump will set that back.
But Trump has maybe saved free speech by teaming up with Musk. If Harris was elected, the EU would have crushed Twitter by either imposing crushing fines or forcing Musk to bend the knee to censorship. Only a pro free speech govt in America has the political power to force the EU to reconsider.
Trump’s election has basically killed net zero, which is the most illiberal economic policy in decades. Gone are govt mandates on energy production and manufacturing, which is state control of the economy.
I’ll give Biden credit for one thing. He has supported strong anti-trust action that is a threat to global oligarchies and monopolies. I hope Trump continues down this path, but this was dead in the water with Harris anyway, because mega donor Reed Hoffman is strongly opposed to this agenda.
I support free trade, but you can’t have free trade with a country like China because it uses slave labour. China isn’t a communist state. It’s a fasc!st state because it has merged the interests of corporations and business.
It would help the article if a definition of classical liberalism was included. According to Wikipedia:
While not a perfect fit I consider Trump’s outlook to be rather closer to Classic Liberalism than that of Harris.
Of course if you are talking about ‘liberalism’ of the eighties then that was not the ‘Classical’ sort.
Oh screw off Francis. All the American people have done is reject this modern “liberalism” that wears Classical Liberal values as a skinsuit. Your movement does not believe in anything other than government itself and resists all limits on is power. Funny how that sounds like the complete opposite when you break it down huh? No, what is really happening is Classical Liberalism is back with a vengeance and you, your associates, and your ideology is its greatest enemy.
Don’t get carried away, lads! The pendulum will swing back in 2 years after America is reminded of what a comically awful president Trump is.