Postwar Liberalism as a Usable Past?: The Rewards and Risks of Historical Revisionism

Abstract

If there ever was a liberal consensus, there is certainly no consensus today about what liberalism was, or is, or might become. Its left-wing critics believe that liberalism is a ruthless free-market ideology promoting the global hegemony of capitalism. Its right-wing critics believe precisely the opposite: that it's a creeping socialism hoping to curtail capitalism and destroy the free market. Left critics accuse liberalism of favoring a selfish individualism that denies the value of community. Right critics claim that it threatens individual rights with collectivist values and weakens communities with elitist conceptions of the public good. The sound and fury of these contradictory attacks on liberalism have succeeded until recently in shouting down more nuanced and balanced assessments. But as the Republican Party under George W. Bush steers the United States further and further to the right, a number of historians and political theorists have begun to view liberalism in a new light. Without espousing a nostalgic return to the good old days of liberalism's heyday, they argue that liberalism is not quite the demon its critics have made it out to be. They suggest that a more accurate understanding of liberalism might contribute to a vision of the national past that could prove useful today.