My Review of Adrian Woodridge's "The Revolutionary Center"

Liberalism Under Siege

Adrian Wooldridge, formerly political editor of The Economist and now an opinion columnist at Bloomberg, has offered up a history of liberal political thought from Montesquieu to John Stuart Mill and on to Hayek, Keynes, and Friedman. That liberalism faces attacks to today from the authoritarian Right and the identitarian Left reminiscent of the 1930’s. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2023/11/reliving-1930s-part-5.html ) And it goes without saying that the concept of free speech is now under a withering assault. Wooldridge wants to reclaim liberalism’s revolutionary history that brought freedom and prosperity to much of the world. Thus, you can call him a revolutionary centrist, and the world truly needs hm today.

 

For whatever reason, too many people have abandoned the basic tenets of liberalism which include freedom of thought, a free market, room for heterodox views and the removal of obstacles to self-development. In short, Wooldridge believes in a meritocracy that offers a ladder up for those folks who have been left behind.

 

In terms of government liberalism stands for the separation of powers as articulated by the U.S. Constitution. He quotes Lord Acton about power corrupting, and we are getting a real-life lesson with the antics of Donald Trump.

 

Wooldridge sees three strands of liberalism today. The first being neoliberalism with its faith in markets to solve society’s problems. Second, managerial liberalism, which is characterized by an elite consensus coming out of Davos, the universities, and the NGOs. The third form is progressive liberalism which exalts rights over responsibilities especially for groups. I would not call this liberalism.

 

Wooldridge offers political solutions reanimating liberalism. He moves to the right and the left at the same time by calling for higher taxes, antitrust enforcement of the tech companies, immigration restrictions, and a return to merit-based admissions to the universities. He also doesn’t believe that Muslim fundamentalism is compatible with liberalism. If the Muslim population of Europe can’t be integrated into the broader society Europe will (is) be in a world of hurt.

 

To me the solution is in governing, not only in making political compromises as necessary as they are. In order for liberalism to succeed, it has to govern successfully. That means a wholesale repudiation of the “blue model” that now governs most of America’s large cities. The high tax-low service model of the blue cities and today’s U.K. for example, is forcing voters to move towards the authoritarian right and to the socialist left in the U.S.

 

We are living in a time where the horseshoe theory of politics holds as both the right, and the left ending up in opposition to the liberal order that has served us well for of these years. It is a real shame, and it is very disheartening. Wooldridge points us a way out of this malaise.

My Amazon Review of Nicholas Wapshott's "Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market"

 

The Clash

 

The theme of Nicholas Wapshott’s book is the clash of ideas between superstar economists Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson over the role of government in the economy as played out in series of columns in Newsweek magazine starting in 1966 and lasting through the early 1980’s. Although Wapshott quotes from many of the columns, nowhere is there to be found are the full-length columns of the two protagonists. Because I was an avid reader of those columns when they came out, I was looking forward to rereading at least a few of them. I view this a significant failure of the book.

 

You can view this book as a follow-om to Wapshott’s “Keynes Hayek” book of a few years ago where the role of government was debated in the context of the deflationary 1930’s compared the inflationary 1960’s and 70’s. As an aside, it is not as good as his earlier work. Wapshott makes it out as duel, but in fact both Friedman and Samuelson were friends since their college days in the early 1930’s who were very respectful of each other. Wapshott makes Friedman out as an outsider arriviste, when in fact he was president of the American Economic Association in 1968 where his presidential address set the stage for the great debate about economic policy.

As America’s leading Keynesian Samuelson’s neoclassical synthesis was under attack as his paradigm could not explain the stagflation that was occurring in the U.S. and Western Europe. Simply put inflation was existing side by side with high unemployment. Friedman’s answer was monetarism which took the profession by storm in the 1970’s because it accurately explained the inflationary processes that were underway. However, by the early 1980’s it ceased to work and when crises came in 2008 and 2020, it was Samuelson’s Keynesian playbook that was trotted out to save the day.

 

Wapshott rightly characterized Friedman as a politician seeking to get his libertarian views implemented, while Samuelson was far less motivated by politics. Naturally Freidman as a politician rubbed many of Samuelson’s colleagues the wrong way and took his attacks on their views all too personally.  Along the way Wapshott offers up pretty good biographies of both Freidman and Samuelson. The book is a good read for econ geeks, of which I am one.

For the full Amazon URL see: The Clash (amazon.com)