Is it too late to save liberal democracy?

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":5.06,"text":"Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the most influential contemporary analyst of the links among economics, technology and politics. In 2024, he won the Nobel Prize in economics for his path-breaking work on political economy, together with two of his co-authors, James A Robinson of the University of Chicago and Simon Johnson of MIT."}],[{"start":28.2,"text":"Acemoglu’s most recent book is timely and thought-provoking. It is also an important call to arms. It is so for good reasons: hard-won and precious freedoms are now at stake. What Happened to Liberal Democracy? is also no mere polemic. It is factual."}],[{"start":44.08,"text":"Above all, the book addresses fundamental questions. What is liberalism? Why is it so precious? Why is it internally conflicted? What has made it endangered? Above all, how are we to save it?"}],[{"start":55.92,"text":"His analysis of these questions starts from a fundamental point. Unlike many free-market liberals, he insists that “Democracy . . . is neither at odds with liberal ideas nor an add-on but an integral part of liberalism’s values.” What, after all, is the value of freedom of thought and expression if they can have no political effect? Freedom, he insists, is at least as much about democratic politics as it is about markets."}],[{"start":80.58,"text":"In order to clarify his position, he distinguishes “three corners” of liberalism."}],[{"start":85.38,"text":"In the first are “progressive” proponents of liberty, notably Jean-Jacques Rousseau with his totalitarian concept of the “general will”. Acemoglu argues that Rousseau is the intellectual ancestor of our contemporary “social engineers”, notably those seeking to enforce the “correct” cultural norms upon society. In the second corner is the classical liberal tradition, whose most influential recent advocate was Friedrich Hayek. This tradition defines liberty as “non-interference”, principally from the state."}],[{"start":112.16,"text":"Acemoglu puts himself in a third corner, which Europeans would call “social democracy” but Americans mostly know as “liberalism”. The core idea here is “non-domination”: if people do not enjoy a measure of economic security and protection from dominant — often predatory — private actors, they cannot be truly free. This will then constrain their ability to think new thoughts and do new things, which are the engines of progress."}],[{"start":138.04,"text":"To clarify why the kind of freedom he supports is so valuable, Acemoglu advances four premises and four pillars built on top of them."}],[{"start":146.2,"text":"His first premise of liberalism is fallibility: we have to believe and act upon the belief that we might be wrong. This is the foundation of learning. His second is that our learning is rooted in community. The third is that if we allow open debate and experimentation, what he calls a “gentle” tendency towards improvements in knowledge will emerge. His last is that collective knowledge makes human society work."}],[{"start":170.2,"text":"His first pillar, then, is the need to experiment. The second is the linked ideas of non-domination and self-government. The third is economic growth. Growth is not everything, but if the environmental and social costs of growth are managed and the benefits widely shared, it is the foundation of social progress. The final pillar is “soft communitarianism”, by which he means balancing the rights of individuals against those of the communities in which they are embedded."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":197.12,"text":"On top of these pillars, Acemoglu places his grand idea of “working-class liberalism”. This concept, he states, is built on experimentation and the freedoms of association and expression, is suspicious of excessive power, uses redistribution, allows the less fortunate to participate more fully, values growth, attempts to provide good jobs for everybody and values community, trust and the sharing of useful knowledge."}],[{"start":222.36,"text":"Liberalism, especially in its post-second world war guise, was a triumph. It encouraged science, led to an unparalleled expansion of knowledge, supported democratic self-government, created successful public services, promoted social and political emancipation and oversaw an unprecedented rise in prosperity."}],[{"start":240.64,"text":"Yet all, alas, is far from well with Acemoglu’s version of liberalism."}],[{"start":245.18,"text":"Some of its recent difficulties are due to inherent contradictions. Acemoglu summarises these as the “three I’s: inclusion, ignorance, and intolerance”."}],[{"start":254.24,"text":"Inclusion is about incorporating previously excluded groups, such as the disenfranchised poor, women, minorities and immigrants, while reconciling longstanding in-groups to these changes in their relative positions. Ignorance is about dealing with widely held beliefs that are wrong or, worse, incompatible with social harmony. Intolerance is the biggest challenge of them all: what degree of intolerance can (and should) liberals tolerate?"}],[{"start":280.6,"text":"Yet the big problems now afflicting liberal democracy are not so much rooted in these longstanding contradictions as in huge changes in relative economic fortunes."}],[{"start":290.16,"text":"What Acemoglu calls the “industrial compact” — mass industrialisation, economic growth, trade unions and high and rising wages — has anchored the political systems of the high-income countries. But then came deindustrialisation, a war on the trade unions and falling relative wages of less-educated workers. At the same time, there was a huge expansion of universities and the emergence of a mass graduate class, with different values from those of the old working class, yet also aspirations the economy could not meet."}],[{"start":322.28,"text":"Yet these have not been the only changes. Also significant has been the new cultural and identity politics of the left that clashed with a rising cultural and identity politics of the right. These divisions fractured the old coalition between liberal graduates and the more socially conservative working class, a process accelerated by the huge expansion in the numbers of the former group."}],[{"start":344.24,"text":"Making all this worse, argues Acemoglu, particularly in the US, has been the rise of the tech sector, with its elitist and anti-democratic social and political attitudes. But the tech sector’s culture is, he suggests, not as important as its algorithms, especially their impact on the dissemination of information and opinion in social media. Now, moreover, we also have the burgeoning and apparently uncontainable impact of artificial intelligence."}],[{"start":370.84,"text":"The book’s discussion of these economic, social, cultural and technological changes is its most important part. It explains not just why the old party-political loyalties have been falling apart, but also the rise of rightwing and leftwing populism."}],[{"start":385.2,"text":"This all looks rather bleak. So what does Acemoglu suggest needs to be done within his framework of “working-class liberalism”? He recommends five sets of actions."}],[{"start":394.88,"text":"First, there should be “renewed understanding of the value of community as the nexus of self-government, experimentation, and sharing of information”. This would include greater reliance on citizens’ assemblies. Second, there should be a return to liberalism’s founding ideas of freedom and equality, including limitations on oppressive inequalities. Third, we should craft “a unifying narrative that highlights the common ground among diverse communities”. Fourth, we should create “an agenda for regenerating shared prosperity by building better institutions and technologies that can manufacture plentiful good jobs for workers of diverse skills”. Finally, there must be “a commitment to providing broadly available, effective public services”."}],[{"start":440.64,"text":"I would like to believe such a regeneration of mid-20th-century politics is feasible. Alas, I do not."}],[{"start":447.2,"text":"One big difficulty is that the “communities” he lauds are a double-edged sword. They divide as often as they unite. In today’s “multicultural” and ideologically riven western societies, loyalties to community are frequently intensely divisive."}],[{"start":461.68,"text":"Another difficulty is the apparently uncontainable power of the tech oligarchs, at least in the western world. Nobody has yet been able to control the algorithms they employ or the technologies they develop, however dangerous those may be."}],[{"start":474.44,"text":"A further possibility is that Acemoglu is just too optimistic about our collective ability to shape technology in the way we want. Instead, it will develop in what its creators believe are the most profitable ways, as it normally has."}],[{"start":488.6,"text":"The most worrying possibility of all is that the ship of his version of liberal democracy has sailed. Historically, nearly all societies have operated either under what Acemoglu labels the “cage of norms” or under oppressive hierarchies, which also enforce extreme political, social and economic inequality."}],[{"start":514.24,"text":"Industrialisation changed this, because it mobilised and organised the working class. Now, as industrialisation fades, we are in danger of returning to autocracy or, as in China, trying to embrace technology without opening the autocratic cage."}],[{"start":522.16,"text":"The biggest question this important book fails to answer is how, even if it is indeed desirable, the political forces needed to bring about the restoration of mid-20th-century liberalism are to re-emerge."}],[{"start":533.04,"text":"Karl Marx’s most important idea was that political ideology and social order are downstream of technology. His biggest failure was not to understand how industrialisation and growth would in fact broaden political power beyond the “bourgeoisie”."}],[{"start":548.32,"text":"Yet now, in the era of deindustrialisation and AI, we seem to be reaching the end of that era, as Acemoglu’s book explains. Is it really possible to restore the politics of a technological and economic age that is itself vanishing?"}],[{"start":563.16,"text":"What Happened to Liberal Democracy? Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu Profile £25/Penguin $32, 416 pages"}],[{"start":574.6,"text":"Martin Wolf is the FT’s chief economics commentator"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":578.28,"text":"Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café and follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X"}],[{"start":588.8,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1786697528_3384.mp3"}