In the Cold War, the US-led camp did not only position itself against communism. The Soviet Union, which emerged victorious from the war against fascism, became the place to look not only for those who wanted a classless and exploitation-free world, but also for national liberation struggles against colonial states, and it became the bearer of Enlightenment thought, especially as fascism positioned itself not only against communism but also against the ‘values of 1789.’
In the Cold War, liberal figures extended the war against the USSR and communism to the idea of progress and the core values of the Enlightenment, which meant a metamorphosis of liberalism. Early liberal thought, inspired by Enlightenment thought, was taking a turn against its own history and shedding its Enlightenment-progressive ‘baggage’ as it fought against communism, which it thought had entered through the door it had opened.
Historian Samuel Moyn’s controversial book Liberalism Against Itself examines Cold War liberalism, pointing out how some famous liberals of this period reinvented liberalism. Although he occasionally returns to the interwar period, or even to the 19th century, he implies that the Cold War was a turning point. More interestingly, even though the USSR ceased to exist in 1991, Cold War liberalism still seems to be the dominant ‘variant.’ Moyn also expresses doubts about whether this kind of liberalism is sustainable.
How do you evaluate recent reactions against your book, Liberalism Against Itself, especially from liberal circles? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a text so debated, even one Arendt pundit accused you as a ‘provocative writer.’ Why are Cold War liberals still so active?
I try to write books that prompt discussions, sometimes heated ones, so I’ve been happy with the traction this one has gotten. One reason I think the discussion is necessary is how deeply rooted in American intellectual life the Cold War liberal perspective became in my youth, when after 1989 it became a kind of default position. I’m hoping the debate about the book undermines that default slightly, but that is the most to be expected.
Are you, perhaps, underestimating the prehistory of Cold War liberalism? “Liberalism of Fear”, or, a sort of pessimistic vision of the world, a Spenglerian worldview, was very common after World War I, and against the Bolshevik Revolution. Even in Italy, liberals had made a pact with fascist in the early 1920s, and libertarian guru Ludwig von Mises hailed fascism as an ‘emergency brake’ for Western civilization against ‘barbaric-Asiatic’ Communism. Moreover, 19th century liberalism also had its Counter-Enlightenment moment after 1848. What really changed with the Cold War?
Yes, you are right: I exaggerate for effect. Liberals before the Cold War paved the way for Cold War liberalism, including in centering their practices around fear. Consider, for example, the liberals who joined the 1848 revolution and, within a few short years, were so disturbed by the social disorder they helped unleash that they reverted to backing conservative repression. But I think if we focus more intently on liberal theory, as opposed to liberal practice, we can note certain disparities that coexist with the continuities you note. For example, Alexis de Tocqueville speaks of “salutary fear,” but rejects the proposal of obsessing about threats to freedom, as Cold War liberals did. The real task, he argued, is to locate the right mix of governmental and non-governmental institutions propitious to the exercise of freedom. As I see it, Cold War liberal theory entirely abandoned that inquiry. And many Cold War liberals themselves – like Lionel Trilling in my book – insisted that they were breaking from the false expectations of earlier liberalism. All things considered, a change in emphasis can lead to a pretty radical change in posture, and I think this happened in what the Cold War liberals did to the ongoing liberal tradition.
One of the most interesting observations you made in your book is Cold War liberalism’s proud pro-Zionist position, although they did not even lift a finger for the decolonization struggle at best, and at worst, they opposed the emancipation of colonized/oppressed peoples. Is this a contradiction, a hypocrisy, or an indicator that Zionism has not been an ‘emancipatory’ or ‘Enlightened’ project at all?
I think it’s a contradiction more than it is hypocrisy. Because through their Zionism, Cold War liberals showed that there is room for activism, nationalism, even violence in the name of building state power. So it is a promising feature of their thought that contradicts their official views, even if it is also true that they failed to extend their views to other peoples around the world. Throughout the book, I do not just attack the Cold War liberals, but try to show how their own thought offers a way back to the promising features of the earlier liberalism that prevailed before. This is why I remark that perhaps Cold War liberals were not “too Zionist, but not Zionist enough” – was their mistake to be nationalism, or not even-handed to recognizing the emancipatory as well as the oppressive aspects of nationalism?
If another vision for the future, be it Communism or national liberation, is declared obsolete by Cold War liberals, how can some ‘dissident’ liberals change the fate of liberalism now? Nobody wants to return to the welfare state, nobody accepts the challenge from any non-capitalist or non-liberal pathways in the Western world. It seems that liberalism needs an external challenge to clean up itself, but it also never allows any other project.
I don’t know, but I am skeptical that external challenge will lead to anything more than endurance of Cold War liberalism. After all, as you say, liberals have generally not faced external challenges forthrightly, but often scapegoated enemies for internal problems they refuse to solve. If Cold War liberals ever race an external enemy powerful enough to chasten it — even the Soviet Union did not possess that kind of power — one could imagine a reset. But my goal is not to encourage the overthrow of Cold War liberalism by its enemies, most of which have hardly offered superior models. Instead, the hope is that younger generations that refuse to settle for the Cold War liberalism of the last few decades are mounting an internal challenge that liberals cannot ignore. I just hope my book provides a small amount of help in the process.
