After Liberalism

In this trenchant challenge to social engineering, Paul Gottfried analyzes a patricide: the slaying of nineteenth-century liberalism by the managerial state. Many people, of course, realize that liberalism no longer connotes distributed powers and bourgeois moral standards, the need to protect civil society from an encroaching state, or the virtues of vigorous self-government. Many also know that today's "liberals" have far different goals from those of their predecessors, aiming as they do largely to combat prejudice, to provide social services and welfare benefits, and to defend expressive and "lifestyle" freedoms. Paul Gottfried does more than analyze these historical facts, however. He builds on them to show why it matters that the managerial state has replaced traditional liberalism: the new regimes of social engineers, he maintains, are elitists, and their rule is consensual only in the sense that it is unopposed by any widespread organized opposition. Throughout the western world, increasingly uprooted populations unthinkingly accept centralized controls in exchange for a variety of entitlements. In their frightening passivity, Gottfried locates the quandary for traditionalist and populist adversaries of the welfare state. How can opponents of administrative elites show the public that those who provide, however ineptly, for their material needs are the enemies of democratic self-rule and of independent decision making in family life? If we do not wake up, Gottfried warns, the political debate may soon be over, despite sporadic and ideologically confused populist rumblings in both Europe and the United States.

A bracing account of liberalism's most radical critics introducing one of the most controversial movements of the twentieth century "One of the best discussions of the extreme right's intellectual foundations that I have ever read."--George Hawley, author of Making Sense of the Alt-Right "One of the best books I've read this year. . . . Its importance at this critical moment in our history cannot be overstated."--Rod Dreher, American Conservative In this eye-opening book, Matthew Rose introduces us to one of the most controversial intellectual movements of the twentieth century, the "radical right," and discusses its adherents' different attempts to imagine political societies after the death or decline of liberalism. Questioning democracy's most basic norms and practices, these critics rejected ideas about human equality, minority rights, religious toleration, and cultural pluralism not out of implicit biases, but out of explicit principle. They disagree profoundly on race, religion, economics, and political strategy, but they all agree that a postliberal political life will soon be possible. Focusing on the work of Oswald Spengler, Julius Evola, Francis Parker Yockey, Alain de Benoist, and Samuel Francis, Rose shows how such thinkers are animated by religious aspirations and anxieties that are ultimately in tension with Christian teachings and the secular values those teachings birthed in modernity.

Art after Liberalism is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging social crises. It is also an inquiry into emergent ways of living, acting, and making art in the company of others. The apparent failures of liberal thinking mark its starting point. No longer can the framework of the nation-state, the figure of the enterprising individual, and the premise of limitless development be counted on to produce a world worth living in. No longer can talk of inclusion, representation, or a neutral public sphere pass for something like equality. It is increasingly clear that these commonplace liberal conceptions have failed to improve life in any lasting way. In fact, they conceal fundamental connections to enslavement, conscription, colonization, moral debt, and ecological devastation. Now we must decide what comes after. The essays in this book attempt to register these connections by following itinerant artists, artworks, and art publics as they move across comparative political environments. The book thus provides a range of speculations about art and social experience after liberal modernity. Featuring a conversation with Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon of MTL Collective.

In After Liberalism, the distinguished historian and political scientist Immanuel Wallerstein examines the process of disintegration of our modern world-system and speculates on the changes that may occur during the next few decades. He explores the historical choices before us and suggests paths for reconstructing our world-system on a more rational and socially equitable basis.

In this collection, leading international scholars provide their perspectives on the continuing role of the liberal paradigm, both as a theoretical approach to international relations, and as an ordering principle of international politics.

Arabic thought in the liberal cage / Hussein Omar -- Corrupting politics / Nadia Bou Ali -- Illiberal Islam / Faisal Devji -- Postcolonial prophets: Islam in the liberal academy / Neguin Yavari -- A new deal between mankind and its gods / Abdennour Bidar -- The dissonant politics of religion, circulation, and civility in the sociology of Islam / Armando Salvatore -- Islamic democracy by numbers / Zaheer Kazmir -- Bourgeois Islam and Muslims without Mosques / Carool Kersten -- Islamic secularism and the question of freedom / Arshin Adib-Moghaddam -- Militancy, monarchy and the struggle to desacralise kingship in Arabia / Ahmed Dailami -- Islamotopia: revival, reform, and American exceptionalism / Michael Muhammad Knight -- Preliminary thoughts on art and society / Sadia Abbas -- The political meanings of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam / Edward E. Curtis IV -- Post-Islamism as neoliberalism / Peter Mandaville

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.