Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist

Damn, pouring rain today and had the time to finish the book I’m reading.I’ve often had that experience; not wanting a book to finish. Usually it’s with novels and rarely with ‘non-fiction’, and certainly very rarely with political philosophy. But Alexander Zevin’s <b>Liberalism at Large.</b> is a gem.Timely, great research methodology and lucid.Zevin's book is an account of The Economist, the weekly newspaper. Zevin suggests that the paper is best understood as a principal institution of what he refers to as 'Actually Existing Liberalism'.AEL is a way of capturing Liberalism, as both a set of amorphous and contradictory ideas and the way political practice is both influenced and provides a feedback [loop] for the ideas.The substance of the book examines the dissemination of this (AEL) through its various editors in standalone chapters. Especially to be commended are the chapters particular to the more famous editors; Walter Bagehot, Francis Hirst of the 19th century and Layton and Crowther of the 20th. It is fascinating to read of ‘battles’ over ‘liberalism’ and its definitions between the editors and with variously, JS Mill, Fred Harrison, and at the turn of the 19th/20th TH Green. The influence is not restricted to the UK, but extends to the rest of the world and especially the US.Zevin details the claim that much of The Economist’s ‘Liberalism’ and its attempts to effect change in Government economic policy over the past was in fact decidedly ‘illiberal’. In the 19th century fighting against the extension of the franchise; in the 20/21st defending finance capital (‘Reaganomics’ and later, Austerity programmes).The book implies Liberalism needs to wake up to its own misdemeanours and stop blaming others.Fascinating.

Since the end of the Cold War, The Economist has become a cheerleader for globalization, light regulation, free-market capitalism, and war. It even claimed to have coined the term “privatization.” I began to question its worldview about twenty years ago. Its writers had become smug, neoliberals, and a case can be made that the magazine is partly responsible for the mess we are in now. It has at times supported Ronald Reagan, America’s regime change wars, the Neocons, and the religious right. Alex Zevin reviews the newspaper’s past views and its role in shaping events. It has often been on the wrong side of history. Zevin is an American left-wing academic and the book tells a fascinating story.Most of the paper's journalistic staff graduated from Oxford and Cambridge universities. Its editors view its lack of diversity as an asset. It has helped the paper speak with one predictable voice or perhaps they all live in a bubble. The paper has over 1.5 million subscribers (800,000 in the U.S. alone) and its readers have included Marx, Mussolini, Keynes, FDR, and Angela Merkel. It became very influential in the 1990s after the Cold War ended. I became a reader in the 1970s when I was a fan of Hayek and Friedman. My university economics professor brainwashed me. My views have matured since then.In recent years, the paper has disapproved of Trump and Brexit. It endorsed Clinton in 2016 and favored Britain remaining in the European Union. In the 2017 and 2019 British general elections, it endorsed the pro-EU Liberal Democrats, rather than Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. The LibDems won a 7.4% share of the vote in 2019. The paper's senior staff seems to spend too much time with the Davos crowd and appear out of touch with ordinary people in England.Since the Economist was founded in 1843, it has usually shunned state intervention and it has been in favor of free markets, free trade, and little or no regulation. During the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, it criticized the British government for buying food to help the starving in Ireland. It argued against interfering with the workings of the market in order to relieve their suffering.Laissez-faire capitalism has often made life hard for the working class, in 1900 the life expectancy of Americans was 45 years. After the Great Depression, the newspaper admitted that laissez-faire had caused inequality and insecurity and that state intervention was often needed to correct its deficiencies. It moved to the center. In Britain, it endorsed social-democratic policies like the postwar welfare state and universal healthcare.In recent years it has rediscovered its enthusiasm for laissez-faire. Mark Blyth at Brown University argues that both major parties have written off the bottom 30% of society. He claims that the American working class has not had a pay rise since 1979, and globalization has failed them. He believes this explains the anger behind the Trump phenomenon. However, The Economist does not seem to be recommending universal healthcare and a welfare state in the US, although it does so in Britain since the 1940s. In the US it has often advocated market deregulation, lower taxes, the cutting of government spending, and the weakening the power of organized labor. Such policies mostly benefit the rich while the poor get poorer.The Economist has usually favored free trade. Britain and the U.S. both got their initial wealth from manufacturing. When they became the world’s dominant military and industrial powers, they both benefitted from free trade. Given the rise of China, it may be argued sometime in the future, that free trade killed off both the British and American empires. Britain switched to free trade in the mid-19th century when it was the only real global industrial power. It hoped it would access new markets for its exports and it had nothing to fear. In the 1860s, President Lincoln wanted to build up America's industrial base and strongly opposed free trade. He increased tariffs to 44% mainly to keep British manufacturers out. From 1871 to 1913, the average U.S. tariff on dutiable imports never fell below 38% and GNP grew 4.3% annually, twice the pace in free trade Britain and well above the U.S. average in the 20th century. After WW2, the U.S. switched from protectionism and preached free trade. At the time it was the world’s dominant industrial power. It took a while for the war-devastated economies of Europe and Asia to recover and catch up.Britain should probably have abandoned its policy of unilateral free trade in the 1870s and 1880s in response to the rise of protectionist America and Germany. It was only in the 1930s, when it was too late, that it realized its empire was in irreversible decline. The U.S. should have acted in the 1970s and 1980s, once American manufacturing began to be battered by German and Asian imports. The outsourcing of jobs has not been good for the American middle class, whose wages have stagnated since the 1970s. The U.S. seems to be going the same way as Britain, yet, the Economist is still advocating free trade. Britain and the U.S. should probably try to protect their domestic industries from unfair competition. Manufacturing is still an important industry.Its most famous editor was Walter Bagehot (1861–1877). It turns out he was a snob, a racist, and a pompous twit. Journalists still quote him almost reverently on the British constitution and the monarchy, but Bagehot did not believe in democracy or universal suffrage. He believed that only 10,000 property owners in England should be allowed to vote. He believed that ordinary people were stupid and irrational. He based these conclusions on interactions with his servants. He was not impressed with Abraham Lincoln whom he viewed with disdain. Bagehot was a former banker and started the paper’s focus on pleasing the financial sector, from a British perspective, this was probably a mistake. Governments favored finance over manufacturing, which wasn’t good for the working classes.Nations that rise to dominance via manufacturing, usually plow the money back into finance. Eventually, there comes a conflict between the financial and manufacturing sectors. A politically dominant financial sector is usually willing to throw domestic manufacturers under the bus to achieve its goals. The Economist has usually taken the side of financial capitalism. During the 2008 financial crisis, the newspaper insisted that the banks had to be bailed out. The priority was to save the financial system, it didn’t really care about anything else. After the crisis, the paper called for minor adjustments to the global economic system rather than wholesale rethinking. It had become a mouthpiece for Wall Street and the City of London. Trump seemed to oppose free trade, globalization, and regime change wars. Naturally, the paper did not consider him a suitable president.The Economist supported the British Empire. Bagehot thought the British were the “most enterprising, the most successful, and in most respects the best, colonists on the face of the earth.” The paper has tended to believe that might was right when Britain and America were the aggressors. It supported Britain in the Crimean War against Russia, and in the Opium Wars with China. It approved of Britain brutally putting down insurrections in colonies like India.After WW2 it switched its allegiance to the U.S. It supported Truman’s commitment to anti-communism in Greece, Turkey, and Korea. It has supported America’s regime-change wars and the coups it organized in Latin America, like Pinochet’s coup in Chile. The paper has backed the U.S. in every major conflict since Vietnam, including the Gulf war, the Balkans war, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It welcomed Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan and his reliance on drone attacks in Pakistan. On North Korea and Iran, it favors a hard line. Unfortunately, regime change using military force has not gone well in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nation-building in the Muslim world has proved expensive in terms of blood and treasure.When the Cold War ended the U.S. emerged as the “winner” and was the world’s only superpower. This victory went to many people's heads. The Economist encouraged the U.S. to spread democracy and liberal economics within an American sphere of influence that encompassed the rest of the world. The Economist also encouraged Washington to increase its military commitments and it encouraged the neocons. The U.S. has probably now reached the point of imperial overstretch. Many American commentators, such as Stephen Walt at Harvard, believe that the U.S. should reduce its global military commitments. Jeffrey Sachs who teaches economics at Columbia argues that the U.S. was once an economic colossus, but China now has a bigger economy in real terms. Our share of world output was 30% in 1950, it is about 15% today. Sachs argues that the U.S. now lacks the economic clout to bend the world to its liking. Sachs argues that the Washington foreign policy establishment is in denial. The same could be said of The Economist.The Economist has been promoting laissez-faire capitalism for 177 years and it does not appear to believe the system needs reform. At this stage, it seems unlikely that Trump or Boris Johnson really cares what it thinks. Its influence is probably at a low ebb. In foreign affairs, Stephen Walt believes America is on the wrong track and is pursuing a strategy it can no longer afford. The West is facing a difficult time with the rise of China and growing inequality in its societies, for better or worse the paper has helped to create the world we live in.

This is good. Well-written, well put together with some very excellent parts which were new to me (especially on Norman Macrae). However, it doesn't escape the fate of many such books which cover such a long time frame - it ends up as a long list of things, few of which are done in enough depth to finally produce a great book. If it had been a shorter time frame, such as the post-war period, then it would be great but sometimes it is a slog. In some senses, it is too short and needed to be longer to provide the depth of argument that the author was aiming at, but, as it is, some readers will skip parts to get to more interesting ones.There aren't the Economist archives here but he does do very well with the material at hand.There is an increasing problem with books that have reviews on their back cover. Invariably they are gushing (I am guilty of it myself). I suspect that some reviewers who gave it an over the top quote hadn't read it all the way through because the argument on liberalism was to my mind the weakest part of the book. It certainly started to peter out as the book progressed, though it was good on Andrew Neil, whose key role is normally missed by historians.