Vox Dei: James Wilson, founder of the Economist
What is liberalism? It means and has meant many different things. We speak of market liberalism, social liberalism and cultural liberalism. Anti-clerical atheists have been liberals, as have reformist archbishops. In the US today, the L-word refers to anyone to the left of the Republican Party. John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, John Rawls and Margaret Thatcher are all reasonably identified as liberals. This polysemy has given liberalism great sway and it has also made it a convenient straw man. Conservatives, social democrats, Marxists and postcolonial thinkers have all defined themselves against liberalism. It has time and again been declared dead. But liberalism has an odd way of coming back. Before neo-liberalism there were new liberals like Leonard Hobhouse and John A Hobson. Indeed, as honest critics must acknowledge, so pervasive is liberalisms influence that it is not obvious that we know how to think beyond its confines. How many of us today can imagine a legal system not based on individual rights? At a moment of crisis how many of us would opt for a revolutionary catastrophe over a Keynesian fix? How many of us would happily give up on the pleasures of the freedom to choose?
If you really want to pin liberalism downand take it onyou need to find something or somebody that has a degree of coherence and continuity that also has some claim to encompass liberalisms entire baggy history, but is also objectionable enough to be held safely at arms length. Take, for example, the Economist. Founded in 1843, it is one of the most enduring weekly political newspapers in the worldand one of the most influential. It is famously provocative, offering not so much investigative journalism as a resum of important events laced with opinion. At times, its tone is facetious bordering on offensive: Top Wonk meets Top Gear. It is unashamedly elitist. It has a readership of 1.5m worldwide, recruited from among the most influential and affluent.
Take on the history of the Economist and you are tackling not armchair philosophical liberalism, but liberalism at work. This is the basic conceit of Alexander Zevins fascinating new history of the newspaper.
Zevin is a professor at the City University of New York. He is also one of the young guard of editors at New Left Review. NLR, the leading voice of what used to be called western Marxism, is still today one of the most vigilant critics of liberalism. Liberal luminaries like Jrgen Habermas and John Rawls, commentators like David Runciman andfull disclosurethe writer of this review, have all been subject to its critical attention. If Pravda was onceread in the west as the mouthpiece of actually existing socialism, Zevin examines the Economist as the house organ of actually existing liberalism.
It is a formidable task. To read the complete run of the Economist would take a large part of a lifetime. To cut to the chase, Zevin sets aside the vast majority of the Economists actual reportage and focuses on the papers famous editorial pages. And, in particular, he singles out for attention three of liberalisms neuralgic questions: democracy, finance and empire. In the course of the 20th century, we grew used to the synthesis of liberalism and democracy, of a liberal affirmation of national self-determination against empire, and an embrace of the radical freedom of money to circulate round the globe. But on all three counts, as Zevin shows, the track record of actually existing liberalism is mixed.
The Economist has yet to see a war it does not like
The Economist was founded by the liberal Scottish banker James Wilson as a mouthpiece of the movement for free trade. This was originally a broad church stretching from radicals like Richard Cobden and John Bright to the cotton interests of Manchester. But that coalition frayed as Wilson opposed assistance to Ireland during the famine and backed the authoritarian usurper Napoleon III following the 1848 revolution in France. By the 1850s, Wilson was doing battle with his erstwhile friends over his support for a war against Russia in the Crimea. This started a tradition. As one outspoken foreign editor remarked at his retirement from the newspaper, the Economist has yet to see a war it does not like. Again and again, spreading and defending the benefits of western liberalism has offered justification for imperial adventure.
All too often, democracy has come second to the rights of property and commerce. During the American Civil War, the Economists support for free trade meant sympathy for the slave-holding south. The cotton planters, unlike their Yankee industrialist opponents, were fundamentally dependent on export markets. Meanwhile, back home in Britain, the newspaper was far from enthusiastic about the expansion of the franchise. It was not until the early 20th century that it accommodated itself to democracy. And, even then, the question was what democracy meant in practice. Keeping economic policy out of the hands of the masses was all important. During the Cold War this dictated a hard line. In one of the most powerful chapters of the book, Zevin reconstructs the Economists unabashed role on the frontlines of anti-communism. After cheering on the murderous Suharto regime in Indonesia, the Economist also welcomed the bloody right-wing coup in Chile in 1973. When news of Marxist prime minister Salvador Allendes suicide reached London, an editor cavorted through the Economist offices proclaiming my enemy is dead.
Superior: An Economist advert. Image: Economist advertising archives
If there is one common point of attachment across the papers history, it is to the interests of global finance and the City of London, and the (often closely related) Bank of England. The third editor, Walter Bagehot, was the pre-eminent 19th-century theorist of central banking. As recently as 2008, Bagehots Lombard Street served as a manual for Ben Bernanke, the chair of the US Federal Reserve, during the financial crisis. So close was the connection that in the 1980s Rupert Pennant-Rea would serve first as editor of the newspaper and then as deputy governor of the Bank.
According to Zevin this is the algorithm of the Economists liberalism: a running commentary on world affairs that consistently invokes sound economics and the high-minded liberal values of individual rights and freedoms but in fact amounts to an apologia for the interests of finance, the propertied elite and their global power.
A critical history of this kind could easily be wearisome. In Zevins hands it is not. His history is both immensely informative about British politics and world affairs and immensely readable. One of the great successes of this book is its style. Zevin has found a way to write about the Economist in a manner that is authoritative without being hectoring, as well as being humorous without pandering to the Economists own glib witticisms.
But if Zevin is right that the Economist has consistently sided with empire, the elites and money, what does this tell us about liberalism?
In a sense, Zevin as political critic falls victim to his own success as a historian. One of the peculiarities of the Economist is that it cloaks its journalists in anonymity. Time and again, Zevin gets behind that veil. He names names and exposes the inner workings of the editorial offices. It makes for a colourful history. The gallery begins with the Dickensian figures of Wilson and Bagehot. It passes through a bohemian phase in the inter-war period under Walter Layton and Geoffrey Crowther, before reaching the threadbare mid century.
By the 1960s, Zevins cast begins to resemble the unattractive minor characters in a Le Carr novel. If you are looking for exponents of liberalism as the bromide of a down-at-heel ruling class, the 1960s Economist is a good place to start. It recruited in much the same way that the intelligence services used to. In recent decades, Magdalen College, Oxford has supplied a vastly disproportionate number of its journalists. Unsurprisingly, by the 1970s, if not before, its editorial line was frankly more conservative than liberal.
But at this point, Zevins own compelling portrait of the newspaper forces the question: whose liberalism is this? These men, and they are virtually all men in this history, are hardly representative of the much wider canvas of men and women, activists, journalists, politicians and teachers who have made claims in terms of liberalism. As Zevins history records, the vast majority of the Economists polemics have been against other liberals, starting with Cobden and Bright, by way of Keynes, all the way down to Milton Friedman, whose monetarism the Economist was late to espouse.
The divisions within liberalism extend to the newspaper itself. The job of the Economists senior editors has often been to put a solidly conservative spin on a range of opinions and reportage issuing from a newsroom that is far less doctrinaire. Serving as the quasi-official mouth-piece of the City of London, the Treasury and the Bank of England may have its perks. But it takes work to marshal the necessary facts and to hammer a collection of intelligent and independent minds into line.
Does the Economist ever learn? Zevin is far too fair-minded not to recognise the moments when its opinion shifted. In 1914, the newspaper took a bold and surprising stand against the war. By 1916 this had cost the editor, Francis Hirst, his job. In the interwar period, after arguing with Keynes over the gold standard and tariffs, the Economist came round to macro-economic management. By 1956 it was so jaundiced with empire and the Tory Party that it came out all guns blazing against the Suez debacle.
Current editor Zanny Minton Beddoes, who identifies as a Keynesian. Photo: GUY CORBISHLEY
This was the moment in British history, between the 1930s and the 1960s, in which the engagement between liberalism and the left was at its most productive. It was the moment that gave us modern economic government and the welfare state. It was the moment also out of which the new left was born with its amalgam of Marxism, social democracy and cultural liberalism. For many, that moment continues and still constitutes the best hope of progressive politics. But, as far as the Economist was concerned, it did not last. Disillusionment with the British Empire was replaced by an enthusiastic embrace of American dominance, warts and all. The newspapers long attachment to Keynesianism finally gave way in the 1980s to a full-blown espousal of the market revolution, an idolatry that continued unbroken through the turmoil of the 1990s and even 2008.
It is this regression that gives Zevins history of the Economist its narrative arc. It is a stunted Bildungsroman. Having abandoned the more self-reflexive mode of the mid 20th century, the Economist in the 21st century faces once again the contradictions and tensions that first defined its position 150 years earlier. Once again it is dealing with the blowback from imperial wars, the challenge of mass democracy and the instability of finance. In its unabashed espousal of elitist globalisation under the umbrella of American power, Zevin argues, the Economist has become its own worst enemy. In the form of President Trump and Brexit, its utopian liberalism helped to provoke enemies. Naturally it deplores these developments but refuses to offer any cogent explanation for them. Unlike the leading commentators of the Financial Times, the Economist has offered no post-crash mea culpa.
Will the Economist adapt? Zevin offers some hope. The current editor, Zanny Minton Beddoes, the first woman to hold the job, identifies as a Keynesian. At the start of her leadership in 2015, the papers alignment with BarackObama was total. Which made it all the more shocking when Hillary Clinton and the EU were repudiated by the general public in 2016. The question now is where the Economist goes next. What platform do either Trumps America or Brexit Britain provide for transatlantic liberalism? Britain is leaving the richest free-trade zone in the world. Under Trump, America first comes before any more general understanding of globalisation. These questions are all the more pressing given the fundamental challenge posed by the interconnected problem of Chinas rise and the climate crisis. And the coronavirus pandemic has further battered the reputations of competent government in both Britain and the US.
During the Cold War the Economists position was clear cut. But the escalating tensions with China are far more ambiguous in their implications. Thanks to the globalism of the 1990s and 2000s our economies are deeply entwined, and no government in Europe sought that connection with China more actively than the conservative administration of David Cameron, for which the Economist was a cheerleader. What happens when a serious superpower rivalry is superimposed on deep economic integration? The only comparable situation is that of the rise of Kaiser Wilhelms Germany. But as dangerous as that situation turned out to be, it would be belittling to equate the resurgence of China with the modest European rearrangement brought about by Bismarck. Given the hardening of the position not just in Washington but Beijing, how will a liberal paper like the Economist respond? So far it has limited itself to calling for restraint on all sides.
Disillusionment with the Empire was replaced by an enthusiastic embrace of American dominance
Similarly, the Economist has no time for climate change denial. But that does not answer the question of how a liberalism whose moment of birth was the optimistic mid 19th century will navigate the environmental limits to growth. The answers so far are markets and technology proper pricing of fossil fuels and ever-cheaper renewables. That was the answer that the 19th century delivered to Malthus. But as far as the contemporary planetary challenge goes, will such eco-modernism be too little, too late?
Of course, these dilemmas are in no way the Economists alone. Thinking people all over the world are searching for answers. The Economist can be relied on to deliver a line and to do so with grating self-confidence. According to lore, when one young recruit was facing the challenge of composing their first leader, the advice they received from a senior editor was simple: Pretend you are God. In a confusing and uncertain world there is no doubt comfort in that. But Zevins unflinching history shows that certainty comes at a price. For those not inclined to follow the word of God there is no escape from the painful and uncertain exercise of judgment. One small step concerns the Economist itself. Do read it. But dont start with the leaders. Start at the back where the world often appears in a less tidy and more truly thought-provoking form.
Read the original post:
What the Economist doesn't tell you - Prospect Magazine
- Fox News Anchor Comes Unglued, Berates 'Dumb' Liberal Colleague - The Daily Beast - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Mathew Chandy '24, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences - UConn Today - University of Connecticut - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Will No One Rid Me Of These Meddlesome -Isms: Thinking and Rethinking Liberalism - Front Porch Republic - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Why market demand doesn't capture the value of the liberal arts | Letters - Tampa Bay Times - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- See what the students were wearing for the School of Liberal Studies at Savannah High prom - Savannah Morning News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Is a $330000 liberal arts education still 'worth it?' - Los Angeles Loyolan - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Judge installed by liberal Democrats over centrist Hochul pick responsible for Harvey Weinstein ruling - New York Post - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Liberal Cities, Conservative Towns Seek Supreme Court's Help on Homelessness - The Wall Street Journal - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Luke Grimes on Yellowstones liberal critics: A lot of people see a cowboy hat and think, thats not for me - The Independent - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Liberal pundits really do have weekly meetings to 'shape' message on Trump - Washington Times - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Trump slams 'Bidenomics' ahead of court, claims to have a 'good chance' of winning liberal state - Fox News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Ones a Conservative, Ones a Liberal. Heres Their Secret to Friendship. - InsideHook - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Bill Cotterell: What? NPR is liberal? Say it ain't so - Tallahassee Democrat - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Orban: Hungary is island in the European progressive liberal ocean - bne IntelliNews - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- NY Times keeps spotlight on NPR crisis on heels of Uri Berliner blowing whistle on liberal bias - Fox News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- CPAC Hungary: ex Polish PM Morawiecki warns of "destructive ideas of liberal elites" - Notes From Poland - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- The biggest threat to freedom in the West is liberalism itself - The New Statesman - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Letter: NPR Editor Berliner reveals liberal bias of network - Arizona Daily Star - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Chicago native says residents livid over liberal mayor's new migrant funding, ready to vote for Trump - Fox News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Ontario Liberal leader says Dresden landfill project could be nixed with 'stroke of a pen' - The Chatham Daily News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Opinion: The Liberals' immigration policies have accomplished the opposite of what was intended - The Globe and Mail - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- At Issue | Was the Liberal budget a bust with Canadians? - CBC.ca - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative? - The New Yorker - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Letters to the Editor: 'I see myself in Katie Britt' what liberal critics missed in the senator's response - Los Angeles Times - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Even when it criticizes Israel, the liberal world is not against us - opinion - The Jerusalem Post - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Former Trump Aide Alyssa Farah Griffin Becomes a Liberal Favorite - The New York Times - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Renowned author, liberal arts proponent to deliver annual Lester Lectures - Mercer University - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- NYU to Host Zaheer Ali at the Annual Liberal Studies Student Research ColloquiumApril 5 - NYU - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Power to the Neighborhoods!: New York City Growth Politics, Neighborhood Liberalism, and the Origins of the ... - Joint Center for Housing Studies - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Canada's Conservatives back NDP-Liberal anti-scab legislation that undermines the right to strike - WSWS - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- The Surprising Left-Right Alliance That Wants More Apartments in Suburbs - The New York Times - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- PARKER: Clarence Thomas, liberal racism and the ongoing denigration of Black conservatives - Kankakee Daily Journal - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Media Scream: Hollywoods freaks over Trump - Washington Examiner - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Why liberals failed in the fight against antisemitism - JNS.org - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Renew manifesto sneak peek and bits from Bucharest congress - EURACTIV - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Katie Britt calls on liberal media 'to pay attention' to border - 1819 News - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal truck wash cited $171k for OSHA violations - KSN-TV - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Over 30,000 Killed in Gaza, but Even Israel's 'Liberal Left' Says: That's War - Opinion - Haaretz - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Man Injured in Beaver County Accident - KSCB News.net - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- What is the Market's View on China Liberal Education Holdings Ltd (CLEU) Stock's Price and Volume Trends Monday? - InvestorsObserver - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- German liberals send defence expert into tripartite EU election leadership team - EURACTIV - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Ramaswamy warns liberal justices 'buying political latitude' with 9-0 ruling as more Trump cases lie ahead - Fox News - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- How much of this is propelled by white liberal guilt from executives?: Gutfeld - Fox News - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberals and the Libel of Christian Nationalism - The Imaginative Conservative - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Arts & Science Academy - Austin extends home winning streak to seven - MaxPreps - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Racism and the Denigration of Black Conservatives - Daily Signal - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Watchdog group exposes radical, liberal ideology of school-based health centers - The Lion - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- What happens when a liberal learns her family owned slaves? - Leader & Times - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Is it Liberal Arts, Without the Arts? - Xavier Newswire - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Quebec Liberal Party would be more popular with Denis Coderre at the helm: poll - Montreal Gazette - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Maine's Liberal Members of Congress Stand by Biden After Disastrous, Confused Press Conference - The Maine Wire - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Liberal Media Scream: Kristen Welker likes to lecture Republicans, too - Washington Examiner - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Australia's only Liberal government lives on - for now - Yahoo News Australia - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Liberal institutions are the threat to liberal institutions Claudine Gay is warning about - Washington Examiner - January 10th, 2024 [January 10th, 2024]
- Elon Musk, the "free speech absolutist" kicks liberal journalists off Twitter - Daily Kos - January 10th, 2024 [January 10th, 2024]
- Liberal Arts and studies in humanities under attack on college campuses - The Community Word - January 10th, 2024 [January 10th, 2024]
- Liberal candidate for federal byelection planned to run for Conservatives last year - National Post - January 10th, 2024 [January 10th, 2024]
- Bill Barton: 'The Liberal by the Bay' - Redheaded Blackbelt - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- OPINION | Female-dominated liberal arts imperative in male-dominated tech world - Tulane Hullabaloo - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Dean of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts job with Tarleton State University | 37572379 - The Chronicle of Higher Education - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Laughing Stock: 'A liberal agenda' may not be what you think - Tucson Weekly - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Justin Trudeau plays the Trump card - POLITICO - POLITICO - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Norman Lear, Producer Of TV's 'All In The Family' And Influential Liberal Advocate, Dies At 101 - Newstalk 750 - 103.7 ... - KFQD - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Kremlin Taps Liberal Businessman to Oppose Putin in 2024 Election Report - The Moscow Times - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Norman Lear, producer of TV's 'All in the Family' and influential liberal advocate, has died at 101 - WV News - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- MoveOn Carries Out Layoffs as Liberal Groups Struggle to Raise Money - The New York Times - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Norman Lear, producer of TV's 'All in the Family' and influential liberal advocate, has died at 101 - El Paso Inc. - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- UW System President suggests universities with high numbers of low income students should shift away from liberal arts - Wisconsin Examiner - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Norman Lear, producer of TV's 'All in the Family' and influential liberal advocate, has died at 101 - The Caledonian-Record - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Israels representative in New York resigned to protest Netanyahu. Now hes got some tough words for liberal New York Jews. - Forward - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Neal Milner: Watch That Swinging Door, Liberals, Lest It Hit You On The Way Out - Honolulu Civil Beat - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- The Liberal Answer to Cancel Culture - Manhattan Institute - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Study: Liberal US priests facing 'progressive' extinction - The Pillar - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Liberal Jewish U.S. Groups Are Walking an Oh-So-Thin Tightrope - The New Republic - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Why a liberal arts degree is often a ticket to career success - USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Open Forum: In their time, founding fathers were liberal - The Winchester Star - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Liberals announce National Campaign Committee Co-Chairs - Liberal Party of Canada - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- UT College of Liberal Arts hosts panel about Senate Bill 17 - The Daily Texan - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Liberal Arts student uses platform to educate others on the ... - Pennsylvania State University - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Stanford celebrates 50 years of Structured Liberal Education ... - Stanford University News - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]