Liberalism and its Discontents by Francis Fukuyama

Liberalism has had no more competent defender in recent decades than Francis Fukuyama. The oft-mocked End of History was actually a robust and intellectually engaging argument for why liberal political regimes are the most satisfying form of order available to human beings. At the end of the Cold War, when anything felt possible, it was an argument that, however provocative, felt close to common sense for many. Thirty years later liberalism is looking more worn-out than triumphant, and many questions that looked settled are once again wide-open. In this atmosphere, Fukuyama is tagging himself back into the ring for another round.

Liberalism and its Discontents is a short book aimed at countering the arguments of the modern far-right and far-left, which argue in different ways that liberalism generates moral anarchy and is an ideological tool for enslavement human beings both socially and economically. There have been a lot of critiques like that in recent years, as economic and social divisions have indeed risen in the United States. Agree with them or not, one thing that the critiques have is a lot of energy. This book by Fukuyama reads almost like an exasperated parent, already tired from decades of work, trying to reason down an angry teenager. Fukuyama pushes back against the right-wing attack on democratic institutions by arguing that the alternatives are always worse, and against left-wing attacks on objective knowledge by saying that a shared society requires acknowledgment of a shared reality. To him it still seems obvious that liberalism produces the best of life, both materially and spiritually, for the greatest number. I don’t expect people who witnessed the triumphant end of the Cold War to ever be able to take a counter-perspective on this subject seriously.

Fukuyama argues in favor of classical liberalism, the tradition of liberal democracy and checks and balances, and concedes that the excesses of neoliberalism are at the root of many of our current woes. There seem to me to be two types of neoliberalism: the economic model favored by the mainstream right, and the identity-politics model of the left. Both cherish individualism above any other goods and are by nature corrosive to a shared society. Fukuyama’s argument is that democracy requires more moderation, reasoned deliberation, and a spirit of compromise. That is certainly true, but its hard to make such a naturally muted argument rise over the angry clamor of contemporary politics. America is a much more radicalized country in 2022 than it was in 1992. To make consensus liberalism appealing to the masses, it’s going to be necessary to package it as a radical solution to their current anxieties.