The Future of Liberalism

17 Pages Posted: 16 Apr 2024

See all articles by Peter J. Boettke

Peter J. Boettke

George Mason University - Department of Economics; Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Date Written: March 21, 2024

Abstract

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia … truly liberal radicalism … The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals … Unless we can make the philosophical foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the market of liberalism at its greatest, the battle is not lost.-F. A. Hayek (1949, 433) F. A. Hayek wrote those words shortly after WWII and the power of liberal ideas had ceased to resonate with the youth. The liberal economics that could be traced from Adam Smith to J. S. Mill to Lionel Robbins and Hayek himself had been discredited in the eyes of many by the long Great Depression from the 1920s through the beginning of WWII. The interwar years had the rise of a multitude of anti-liberal movements both from the left and the right of the political spectrum. Conservative nationalism and an aggressive socialist internationalism both took shape in the aftermath of WWI. The pragmatic political center was impressed by the war-planning by central governments to marshal resources for the allied nations to win the war against the evil of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. This included the mobilization of labor, the enlisting of heavy industry to provide armaments, and even the direct control over scientific inquiry to find technologically superior weapons and provide strategic calculations in battle planning. It was government and the good men and women who occupied positions of decision-making power that

Keywords: Liberalism, Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek, James Buchanan, Deirdre McCloskey

Suggested Citation

Boettke, Peter J. and Boettke, Peter J., The Future of Liberalism (March 21, 2024). GMU Working Paper in Economics No. 24-20, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4768017 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4768017

Peter J. Boettke (Contact Author)

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