Talk:Postliberalism

Belongs in Conservatism series?

The main description says that Postliberalism is not exclusive to the left or the right, but the article is linked as part of American conservatism. That feels a bit contradictory. 136.167.246.110 (talk) 21:02, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Interesting, I'll look deeper into the conservatism series itself to see if it belongs. MaximusEditor (talk) 18:53, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

I addressed this recently elsewhere. I documented an unusual strain of left-wing postliberalism in post-New Left, U.S. counterculture from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, when it mostly died out, although you can trace elements of it surviving into the early 1990s. Philip Slater was one of their proponents, but there's not much written about it. His book The Pursuit of Loneliness (1970) is a kind of progressive, left-wing postliberalism that encapsulates many of the same ideas expressed by right-wing postliberals in the 2000s. When I discovered this, I was shocked. Others have made similar observations, but again, not much to go on here. If memory serves, there is a professor who posted a video on YouTube about how postliberalism can be found on both the left and the right, but I don't remember the details.

However, after 2018, people began to notice that the left-right paradigm wasn't really a line but a circle, playing into the idea that the farther you go left, the more you go right, and the farther you go right, the more you go left. Reason magazine recently had an article about this last week in fact, comparing Trump's far-right, socialism for the rich, proto-fascist policies to Zohran Mamdani. While that it is obviously ridiculous, it does touch on the idea that the left and right are intimately connected in the body politic. We see this fusion come to the foreground in far right movements like the Dark Enlightenment and many of the associated figures who promote these ideas. Bannon famously said he subscribed to Leninism and Yarvin and many others have praised the Chinese Communist party.

One of the most popular books on the right, Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, promotes the idea that the United States needs to be more like China. The author wrote the book while working for the conservative Hoover Institution. In some respects, Trump's anti-environmental policies play into this discourse. Breakneck implicitly argues that the environment should be sacrificed for material gain, an old conservative idea proven wrong, time and again, and which conveniently "forgets" that environmentalism was originally started by conservatives, which is why it was known as conservationism. There's also several books about right-wing countercultural movements in the U.S. that show that those movements drew on left-wing ideas and strategies. So this is somewhat well known.

In any event, the question remains: does postliberalism still exist on the left? In the U.S., I would say it's very small and niche, and hardly worth writing about. However, it is now the dominant ideology on the right (but the centrists won't admit or recognize it). I find this inability of the mainstream media to mention or discuss the dominant ideology of postliberalism incredibly odd, as it only goes to show how out of touch and disconnected they are from reality. Virtually every major right-wing author, politician, and thought leader identifies now as postliberal, yet the corporate media completely ignores it. Viriditas (talk) 00:10, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Robert Heinlein

Should be removed from the writers list. Heinlein shared individualist and libertarian views, which are opposed by postliberals. --2A02:560:551A:E500:8898:63E1:CFF9:DEE4 (talk) 10:02, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

and vice versa, I second that, it's a patent anachronism to boot. Heinlein could've been, or at some point turned, an anti-liberal but hardly postliberal as depicted in this article, the "History" section makes this very clear. Looks rather like a clumsy attempt of beefing up a list of otherwise relative unknowns. -89.245.22.83 (talk) 01:05, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Yet, there are many postliberal elements in his literature. Stranger in a Strange Land, is, in many ways, a paean to postliberalism. Conservatives are not so great with metaphors, so this probably went over a lot of pointy heads. Viriditas (talk) 00:34, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Re: intellectual framework

Critics, including prominent political philosophers, historians, and democratic institutions, argue that postliberalism serves as an intellectual framework for democratic backsliding and illiberalism.

This only applies to conservative postliberalism. Left-wing or progressive postliberalism uses it to promote democracy, albeit a very locally-oriented, communitarian kind of democracy. I commented a bit about this up above. It's a bit tricky, and more research and sources are needed, but the way the statement in the current version is worded is wrong. Philip Slater spent his entire life arguing for more democracy, not less, but he viewed the U.S. institution of democracy as deeply flawed and broken, hence his progressive postliberalism that he promoted. Viriditas (talk) 02:26, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Re: Common good

Critics of postliberalism argue that defining a common good in pluralistic societies presents challenges.

Not buying this at all. Surveys, when worded appropriately, generally identify a shared common good by culture and region. This is not necessarily in opposition to pluralism, but there are attempts by bad actors in professions ranging from academia to law, who have falsely argued otherwise to promote the interests of corporations over people. Think about it. When people share a common good, the interests of the elite are curtailed. This is why the elite invent culture wars and lean into anti-democratic initiatives. Viriditas (talk) 02:31, 1 June 2026 (UTC)