After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State

by Paul Edward Gottfried

Overview

In this trenchant challenge to social engineering, Paul Gottfried analyzes a patricide: the slaying of nineteenth-century liberalism by the managerial state. Many people, of course, realize that liberalism no longer connotes distributed powers and bourgeois moral standards, the need to protect civil society from an encroaching state, or the virtues of vigorous self-government. Many also know that today's "liberals" have far different goals from those of their predecessors, aiming as they do largely to combat prejudice, to provide social services and welfare benefits, and to defend expressive and "lifestyle" freedoms. Paul Gottfried does more than analyze these historical facts, however. He builds on them to show why it matters that the managerial state has replaced traditional liberalism: the new regimes of social engineers, he maintains, are elitists, and their rule is consensual only in the sense that it is unopposed by any widespread organized opposition.


Throughout the western world, increasingly uprooted populations unthinkingly accept centralized controls in exchange for a variety of entitlements. In their frightening passivity, Gottfried locates the quandary for traditionalist and populist adversaries of the welfare state. How can opponents of administrative elites show the public that those who provide, however ineptly, for their material needs are the enemies of democratic self-rule and of independent decision making in family life? If we do not wake up, Gottfried warns, the political debate may soon be over, despite sporadic and ideologically confused populist rumblings in both Europe and the United States.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691089829
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/22/2001
Series:	New Forum Books , #25
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	989,803
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Paul Edward Gottfried is Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College and author of, among other books, Carl Schmitt: Politics and Theory, The Search for Historical Meaning; and The Conservative Movement. Editor in chief of This World, he is also a senior editor of Telos and a contributing editor to Chronicles and Humanitas.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

CHAPTER ONE

In Search of a Liberal Essence 3

CHAPTER TWO

Liberalism vs. Democracy 30

CHAPTER THREE

Public Administration and Liberal Democracy 49

CHAPTER FOUR

Pluralism and Liberal Democracy 72

CHAPTER FIVE

Mass Democracy and the Populist Alternative 110

CONCLUSION 135

Notes 143

Index 177

What People are Saying About This

Amitai Etzioni

Although I disagree with the author on many of his points, I strongly recommend it. Gottfried's thesis is refreshingly novel, strongly advanced, and clearly presented. Whether one is interested in the future of the welfare state or family values, or the economic and social future of America, this is a book one wishes to read.

From the Publisher

"Although I disagree with the author on many of his points, I strongly recommend it. Gottfried's thesis is refreshingly novel, strongly advanced, and clearly presented. Whether one is interested in the future of the welfare state or family values, or the economic and social future of America, this is a book one wishes to read."—Amitai Etzioni, author of The New Golden Rule

"This brilliant and disquieting book should reshape current debates and be essential reading for all who seek to understand them."—Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

"This thoughtful work reflects the intellectual qualities of an erudite political philosopher whose knowledge of European political philosophy in the twentieth century is particularly impressive."—John Lukacs

John Lukacs

This thoughtful work reflects the intellectual qualities of an erudite political philosopher whose knowledge of European political philosophy in the twentieth century is particularly impressive.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

This brilliant and disquieting book should reshape current debates and be essential reading for all who seek to understand them.

Editorial Reviews

"The central fact of the nineteenth century was the emergence of the working class. The central fact of the twentieth century is the emergence of a managerial "New Class" elite, reshaping all modern democracies in its own interest. Gottfried's is a gold-standard analysis of this extraordinary phenomenon, heavily encrusted with sparkling jewels of intellectual history."—-Peter Brimelow, Senior Editor, Forbes Magazine

"Well-written, very learned, and informative."—-Paul Seaton, Society

From the Publisher

"After Liberalism is no angry screed, but a dense, probing work full of insight from the author's seeming encyclopedic knowledge of Western thought."

World

Well-written, very learned, and informative. . . .

Society - Paul Seaton

The central fact of the nineteenth century was the emergence of the working class. The central fact of the twentieth century is the emergence of a managerial "New Class" elite, reshaping all modern democracies in its own interest. Gottfried's is a gold-standard analysis of this extraordinary phenomenon, heavily encrusted with sparkling jewels of intellectual history.

Forbes Magazine - Peter Brimelow

Well-written, very learned, and informative. . . .
— Paul Seaton

Society

The central fact of the nineteenth century was the emergence of the working class. The central fact of the twentieth century is the emergence of a managerial "New Class" elite, reshaping all modern democracies in its own interest. Gottfried's is a gold-standard analysis of this extraordinary phenomenon, heavily encrusted with sparkling jewels of intellectual history.
— Peter Brimelow, Senior Editor

Forbes Magazine

Liberalism as known in 19th-century America and Europe has long departed, an historical development often described and now again lamented by Gottfried. . In the process Gottfried warns, not only liberty but the cultural distinctiveness on which this nation was built will be lost. His wide-ranging survey of European and American views covers advocates of the new liberalism such as John Dewey and the libertarian and populist critics of this trend. This is clearly polemic but one well-documented from both sides of the argument.
— Choice Magazine

W.C. Johnson

"After Liberalism is no angry screed, but a dense, probing work full of insight from the author's seeming encyclopedic knowledge of Western thought."

World Bank

"After Liberalism is no angry screed, but a dense, probing work full of insight from the author's seeming encyclopedic knowledge of Western thought."

World