Liberalism’s Renaissance to Retrenchment
The period after the fall of the western Roman empire in 500 AD up to 1300 AD is classified as dark ages in Europe. First applied to the quality of literature during that period, it later meant to imply the period of religious strife and marauding invasions with social and political instability. Even though the western Roman empire had collapsed, the eastern Roman empire, later called the Byzantine empire continued to thrive during that period. However, as the Byzantine Empire began to crumble after the Christian crusades, many scholars from the empire started immigrating to Western Europe. They brought with them old Greek and Roman manuscripts from the Byzantine churches and monasteries. To a smaller extent, the capture and expulsion of Moors from Spain also led to the discovery of ancient knowledge that Arabs had earlier translated from Greek and Latin into Arabic.
It is said that the discovery of ancient Greek and Roman knowledge was one of the main catalysts for the emergence of renaissance in western Europe. Renaissance, meaning rebirth in French, was a distinct break from the earlier dark ages. Renaissance first blossomed in Italy and then spread throughout the European continent. Along with newly discovered ideas in arts, architecture and science, fresh ideas based on individual and collective freedoms of Greco-Roman democracies also flourished. Subsequent periods of reformation, enlightenment and industrialization built on advancements made during the renaissance period. Even though this was not a secular progression, social, political and humanistic ideas collectively termed as liberalism have since continued to evolve in an upward spiral.
A similar upheaval in political order took place 30 years ago with the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe in a geographical area marginally overlapping with the Byzantine Empire. Thinkers and political pundits heralded it as another moment of the upward march of liberal values and doctrines. Francis Fukuyama summarized this thinking in his book on the ‘End of History’. The book name is a reference to Hegelian-Marxist thoughts that history evolves through gradual and sporadic upheavals against the status quo toward the ultimate order. Challenging Marx’s prediction, Fukuyama thus seemed to proclaim that this ultimate is reached not in communism but in liberalism. Collapse of the communist order meant there was no other social and political ideology left to compete with Liberalism. Taking further cue from the success of liberalism doctrine, European Union expanded eastward to include eastern European states from erstwhile communist regimes. Inevitability of an expanded Europe under liberal democratic regimes was a foregone conclusion.
Now after 30 years, the experience is much different than what it was thought as the crescendo of liberalism. As the iron curtain dividing Eastern and Western Europe fell, many eastern Europeans, especially young and able, left their home countries to seek a better life and career in western Europe. West European companies started tapping into this new resource pool by hiring eastern Europeans, or setting up their manufacturing operations in eastern European countries. As a consequence, social fabric in both northern and southern European countries is being stretched with the native population feeling increasingly disenfranchised and insecure. This migration was also further compounded by influx from outside the European continent, specifically from erstwhile European colonies in Africa. The result of this upheaval is the rise of populist movements in both northern and southern Europe, away from the centrist liberal political and social ideologies. Liberalism is now in retrenchment in Europe as it is in other parts of the world also facing similar circumstances.
Many would argue about the above characterization of these events and their comparison. Was dark period really that dark? How much was the emergence of Renaissance due to the discovery of ancient knowledge? Was Renaissance the beginning of liberalism as compared to later enlightenment period? Given the large chronological gap between the collapse of Byzantine and communism, how relevant it is to draw parallels between the two events.
These arguments are certainly valid and debatable. But they are not as relevant as what else these two events tell us. It is quite clear that sudden collapse in the political order results in drastic economic and social shock waves. The mode of transmission of these shock waves could be through new knowledge and experience gained as the result of the change in political order as well as through the economic forces trying to resolve the earlier imbalances between disparate regimes. It is however not as easy to predict the direction or magnitude of these changes beforehand, as it is to provide a posthumous narrative and labels for these changes. Hegel wrote: “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk”. He was implying that only later we realize the overall impact of the changes that take place.
Today, even though liberalism is on a back foot, it doesn’t mean that the alternative ideologies based on populism will survive. Both the extreme left and right political orders have failed in the past history, causing substantial violence and hardship along the process. As much as we cannot predict the future, we still need to think through what would be needed to continue on the liberal order path. We need to deal with both the global issues such as climate change and population shifts as well as local issues like disenfranchisement and growing inequality. We need to understand the short comings in our local and global institutions and either reform them or build new ones to seek the balance between the local and the global.
Even though we cannot predict how liberalism will evolve and how that new era would be labeled, I hope that the label for the new era would not start with “re”. Happy New Year.
