Federico Reyes Heroles
“All that is solid vanishes into thin air,” reads the Communist Manifesto. A century later, Marshall Berman would turn the expression into a central axis. It takes a turn: every modernization process entails a seed of self-destruction. Who would have imagined it a couple of decades ago? We are witnessing the collapse of the liberal order.
But this word has been manipulated and vilified, even more so when, with profound ignorance, the prefix neo is added to it. For many, neoliberalism – referring to the economic strategy led by Thatcher and Reagan – has an evil intention: to make the poor people poorer and the rich people richer. But reality belies them. With the opening of trade in China alone, some 500 million human beings have left poverty behind. India, another case. Thatcher’s and Reagan’s strategies coincided in one principle: the State as the owner takes resources away from its central mission to attend to the primary objectives of the State: security, health, education, and, on occasion, infrastructure. Since its birth, trade has been a civilizing element and was even the seed of human rights. Globalization puts the consumer and consumer welfare at the center. The State had proved so inefficient that market forces – in regulated competition – could do better. The strategy worked for Britain, the United States, and many others. With a successful insertion into global markets, many countries, such as Botswana, were able to heal their finances and increase welfare. At the same time, democracies multiplied, establishing the basic principles of this form of government: political liberties, division of powers, restraint of the executive branch, and respect for plurality, grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the great liberal thinkers, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Locke, Tocqueville, and many others. To be a liberal is to defend those principles, regardless of the economic strategy of Thatcher and Reagan. The pillars of a democracy cannot be undermined. The true equality of human beings can only emerge from there. Moreover, another central principle is that majority governments are constitutional governments (Noema Magazine (noemamag.com) 9/11/2024).
But the anomalies began. The democratic path suffered alterations. As Freedom House demands, without freedom of expression, it is impossible to speak of a democracy. Without free and systematic elections that guarantee a real change in the leadership, everything else is deception. Moreover, in democracies, political dialogue must be governed by scientific criteria. The government of the majorities is only legitimate when it coexists with minorities, potential majorities.
Since the beginning of the millennium, several authors—most notably Larry Diamond—have pointed out the multiple irregularities in regimes that claimed to be democratic: control over the media, manipulation, and persecution of minorities. Diamond and others coined a very precise term: they are democracies that comply with the forms but do not fully respect liberal principles. They are illiberal.
But the degradation continued. In March 2022, Anne Applebaum published a devastating essay in The Atlantic titled “There is no Liberal World Order.” There, she recalls the prerequisites of a democratic nation. In a very strong speech by the Estonian president, who spoke of freedom of conscience, culture, and trade and warned of Russia’s temptation to become a primus inter pares vis-à-vis the other nations of Europe, she noted that the imperial temptation lurked. Putin walked out of the hall.
November 2024, the most powerful nation elects – by a wide margin – an authoritarian, minority-persecuting leader who does not believe in science or empathy. In Mexico, the regime amputates the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, central matters of its raison d’être, and crushes minorities.
Let’s stop messing around: the liberal order is dying.
Further Reading: