Holmes challenges the philosophical arguments of the high communitarians ... and their intellectual forebears. By the time he is finished, the opposing camp has no survivors, ancient or modern. Anybody who feels drawn to the high communitarian cause owes it to himself (though not to society) to read Mr. Holmes's book; everybody else should read it for pleasure.
Holmes challenges the philosophical arguments of the high communitarians ... and their intellectual forebears. By the time he is finished, the opposing camp has no survivors, ancient or modern. Anybody who feels drawn to the high communitarian cause owes it to himself (though not to society) to read Mr. Holmes's book; everybody else should read it for pleasure.
A landmark book that completely transforms our understanding of the crisis of liberalism, from two pre-eminent intellectuals Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance? In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West. In this brilliant work of political psychology, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of history turned out to be only the beginning of an Age of Imitation. Reckoning with the history of the last thirty years, they show that the most powerful force behind the wave of populist xenophobia that began in Eastern Europe stems from resentment at the post-1989 imperative to become Westernized. Through this prism, the Trump revolution represents an ironic fulfillment of the promise that the nations exiting from communist rule would come to resemble the United States. In a strange twist, Trump has elevated Putin's Russia and Orbán's Hungary into models for the United States. Written by two pre-eminent intellectuals bridging the East/West divide, The Light that Failed is a landmark book that sheds light on the extraordinary history of our Age of Imitation.
This is Mises's classic statement in defense of a free society, one of the last statements of the old liberal school and a text from which we can continue to learn. It has been the conscience of a global movement for liberty for 80 years. This edition, from the Mises Institute, features a new foreword by Thomas Woods. It first appeared in 1927, as a followup to both his devastating 1922 book showing that socialism would fail, and his 1926 book on interventionism. It was written to address the burning question: if not socialism, and if not fascism or interventionism, what form of social arrangements are most conducive to human flourishing? Mises's answer is summed up in the title, by which he meant classical liberalism. Mises did more than restate classical doctrine. He gave a thoroughly modern defense of freedom, one that corrected the errors of the old liberal school by rooting the idea of liberty in the institution of private property (a subject on which the classical school was sometimes unclear). Here is the grand contribution of this volume. "The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production... All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand." But there are other insights too. He shows that political decentralization and secession are the best means to peace and political liberty. As for religion, he recommends the complete separation of church and state. On immigration, he favors the freedom of movement. On culture, he praised the political virtue of tolerance. On education: state involvement must end, and completely. He deals frankly with the nationalities problem, and provides a stirring defense of rationalism as the essential foundation of liberal political order. He discusses political strategy, and the relationship of liberalism to special-interest politics. In some ways, this is the most political of Mises's treatises, and also one of the most inspiring books ever written on the idea of liberty. It remains the book that can set the world on fire for freedom, which is probably why it has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Contemporary political theory has experienced a recent revival of an old idea: that of community. In Liberalism and Community, Steven Kautz explores the consequences of this renewed interest for liberal politics. Whereas communitarian critics argue that liberalism is both morally and politically deficient because it does not adequately account for equality and virtue, Kautz defends liberalism by presenting reports of various partisan quarrels among liberals (who love liberty), democrats (who love equality), and republicans (who love virtue). Founded on the classic texts of Locke and Montesquieu, the liberalism that Kautz advocates is cautious and conservative. He defends it against the arguments of important new communitarians—Richard Rorty, Michael Walzer, Benjamin Barber, and Michael Sandel—and contrasts communitarian and liberal views on key questions. He discusses Walzer' s account of moral reasoning in a democratic community, engages Barber on the nature and limits of republican community, and takes on Rorty's communitarian account of moral psychology and the nature of the self. Kautz also explores the concepts of virtue, tolerance, and patriotism—issues of particular interest to communitarians which pose special problems for liberal political theory—in an effort to rebuild a new and more tenable interpretation of liberal rationality.
What is fascism? By focusing on the concrete: what the fascists did, rather than what they said, the esteemed historian Robert O. Paxton answers this question. From the first violent uniformed bands beating up “enemies of the state,” through Mussolini’s rise to power, to Germany’s fascist radicalization in World War II, Paxton shows clearly why fascists came to power in some countries and not others, and explores whether fascism could exist outside the early-twentieth-century European setting in which it emerged. "A deeply intelligent and very readable book. . . . Historical analysis at its best." –The Economist The Anatomy of Fascism will have a lasting impact on our understanding of modern European history, just as Paxton’s classic Vichy France redefined our vision of World War II. Based on a lifetime of research, this compelling and important book transforms our knowledge of fascism–“the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain.”
The history of modern Europe is often presented with the hindsight of present-day European integration, which was a genuinely liberal project based on political and economic freedom. Many other visions for Europe developed in the 20th century, however, were based on an idea of community rooted in pre-modern religious ideas, cultural or ethnic homogeneity, or even in coercion and violence. They frequently rejected the idea of modernity or reinterpreted it in an antiliberal manner. Anti-liberal Europe examines these visions, including those of anti-modernist Catholics, conservatives, extreme rightists as well as communists, arguing that antiliberal concepts in 20th-century Europe were not the counterpart to, but instead part of the process of European integration.
"One of the most important political books of 2018."—Rod Dreher, American Conservative Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.
A central task in contemporary political philosophy is to identify principles governing political life where citizens disagree deeply on important questions of value and, more generally, about the proper ends of life. The distinctively liberal response to this challenge insists that the state should as far as possible avoid relying on such contested issues in its basic structure and deliberations. David McCabe critically surveys influential defenses of the liberal solution and advocates modus vivendi liberalism as an alternative defense of the liberal state. Acknowledging that the modus vivendi approach does not provide the deep moral consensus that many liberals demand, he defends the liberal state as an acceptable compromise among citizens who will continue to see it as less than ideal. His book will interest a wide range of readers in political philosophy and political theory.