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Chapter 2 democracy leads to tyranny, but, in the absence of democracy, ignorance and brutality will prevail. For Mill, the central virtue of democracy is that it promotes the ‘highest and most harmonious’ development of human capacities. By participating in political life, citizens enhance their understanding, strengthen their sensibilities and achieve a higher level of personal development. This form of developmental democracy holds democracy to be, primarily, an educational experience. As a result, while he rejected political equality, Mill believed that the franchise should be extended to all but those who are illiterate and, in the process, suggested (radically for his time) that suffrage should also be extended to women. However, since the mid-twentieth century, liberal theories about democracy have tended to focus less on consent and participation and more on the need for consensus in society. This can be seen in the writings of pluralist theorists, who have argued that organized groups, not individuals, have become the primary political actors, and portrayed modern industrial societies as increasingly complex, characterized by competition between and among rival interests. From this point of view, the attraction of democracy is that it is the only system of rule capable of maintaining balance or equilibrium within complex and fluid modern societies. As equilibrium democracy gives competing groups a political voice, it binds them to the political system and so maintains political stability. THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM Liberals have been ever optimistic about the future. Despite the recognition that the tides of change wax and wane, they believe that fundamental and irresistible forces draw history towards a determinant end-point, and that end-point is defined by the worldwide triumph of liberal values and structures. Liberalism, then, is not just another ideology; rather, it can be viewed as the end of ideology (as discussed in Chapter 1). Thus, although the claim that the fall of communism had precipitated the end of history in removing the final serious challenger to Western liberalism, this was quickly revealed as false; the mistake being that the declaration was not wrong-headed but simply premature. But where does the confidence that liberalism and history go hand in hand come from? In philosophical terms, it stems from progressivism , the belief that, step-by-step, the world always progresses, and this progress is inevitable. This process is driven, above all, by reason and the accumulation of knowledge, allowing each generation to progress beyond the last. In political terms, it reflects the assumption that liberalism brings benefits, particularly in relation to freedom and prosperity, which no other ideology can rival. While liberal democracy maximizes the sphere of civil liberty, protecting individuals both from the state and their fellow citizens, economic liberalism delivers remorseless growth and widening prosperity based on the use of the market to allocate scarce resources in the most efficient possible way.
Consensus: A broad agreement on fundamental principles that allows for disagreement on matters of emphasis or detail. Progressivism: The belief that history is an inevitable march upwards into the light; a movement away from barbarism and towards civilization.
Yet the image of liberalism as an all-conquering force, its appeal increasingly extending beyond its Western homeland to become truly global, has also been challenged. Liberalism has been criticized from various directions. Marxists have argued that liberalism provides ideological protection for the capitalist mode of production, in both its national and global forms. By emphasizing the importance of foundational equality, liberalism serves to conceal, and thereby legitimize, a reality of unequal class power. Liberalism is thus the enemy of social justice. The
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