In Manifesto for a European Renaissance (Aktos, 2012; originally published in 1999), Alain de Benoist and Charles Champetier state that liberalism is the “main enemy” of the political philosophy they’re seeking to unfold. Indeed, “Liberalism embodies the dominant ideology of modernity” (p. 14) and this in two senses:

First, it develops an anthropology (i.e., a theory of man [anthropos]) according to which each human being is, ontologically speaking, an individual. And Individualism must be regarded in a very deep way. All bonds, social ties, pre-reflective commitments, religious affiliations, and the like are to be torn asunder so that the liberal individual can be freed from all ‘enplacement’ or enmeshment and so that she can be freed up to be a “nowhere person” who can function under the conditions of globalization.

And, second (and surely “teed up” by the first), liberalism doesn’t just prioritize exchanges over reciprocities, quantities over qualities, instrumental reason over thick intuitions. More than this, it has a conception of the good society, and this is, in particular, the market society, which it engenders and which it then seeks to export around the world.

The corollary of the exposure of the liberal individual to vulnerabilities (after all, he has moved to New York City, has slowly broken all ties to place and people, and has become a member of the managerial elite class) is the burgeoning of Leviathan. Benoist and Champetier are in agreement with Patrick Deneen (Why Liberalism Failed [2018]) in that all argue that the deracinated liberal self, one shorn of all thick social ties, must find support–where else is left?–in the burgeoning welfare state.

And it’s this, in fact, that we see, quite tangibly and tragically, in states like Louisiana (see Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers In Their Own Land [2016]) where–if memory serves–about 44% of Louisiana residents were, as of 2016, receiving some form of government assistance.

Liberalism may be the last political theory standing after communism/socialism and fascism both fell, but it is surely not, as Fukuyama triumphantly asserted, the end of history. We can’t continue to live like this.