Preface

It is simply the spirit of the times and there is no cure for it: this is how it often sounds, half-explanatory, half-resigned, when a debate has been prematurely stalled, or perhaps not even started, because certain arguments have been blocked by a taboo. For example, the taboo against questioning the human contribution to climate change. Or that we should not argue that childcare provided by a mother is preferable to childcare provided by a nursery. Or that the abolition of separate toilets for men and women should not be seen as financial and social hygiene nonsense.

Zeitgeist’ is an excuse that says little and explains nothing. Except perhaps that the zeitgeist is difficult to deal with. It is like a viscous slime in social discourse, silencing conversations and leaving ordinary citizens frustrated because they feel powerless and helpless. ‘Normal’ has become suspect anyway, because there are non-normal disadvantaged people lurking everywhere, at whose expense violent structures are supposedly created and maintained. Those who do not belong to the disadvantaged should keep quiet, because they bear collective responsibility for all the world’s ills, from climate change to discrimination of all kinds to the widening gap between rich and poor.

What on earth has led to the fact that today, in some respects, we can only speak and write in this way and not in any other? Where do the bans on thought come from? Why are anti-enlightenment mantras so prevalent in universities and intellectual circles? How can we explain that ‘woke’ argumentation has even begun its inexorable triumphal march onto corporate boards?

With this publication, the Progress Foundation would like to make a contribution to explaining the spreading epidemic of thought prohibition. It is threatening because it is endangering the very societies and states that are considered free, in which we feel comfortable, and from which, if anything, we might expect the progress that can lead us out of apparent or seemingly catastrophic problems such as the climate crisis.

The “narratives” presented here – in the past they would have been called essays – are more than just “food for thought”, as the Progress Foundation calls its new series with deliberate modesty. In all three cases, the authors – Tito Tettamanti, Gerhard Schwarz (supported by his dialogue partner René Scheu) and Oliver Zimmer – provide clear evidence for their theses. The charm of the book is that the differences in approach and the congruence of the results go hand in hand, so to speak.

The entrepreneur-philosopher Tito Tettamanti, the journalist-philosopher Gerhard Schwarz and the historian-philosopher Oliver Zimmer form a Socratic dream team, if you like. If there is an antidote to a derailed zeitgeist, it is an open, serious and yet witty discourse. On behalf of the Progress Foundation, I wish you an enlightening read.

Konrad Hummler
Vice President of the Progress Foundation

In Brief

This thought-provoking book from the Progress Foundation, Zurich, is devoted to the question of why it is so difficult to stop the advance of non-liberal ideas through society and its institutions. Three authors, three points of view, one insight: inoculation begins in the head and heart of the individual.

Entrepreneur and financier Tito Tettamanti sees the main reason for this malaise in an explicitly conceived and deliberate strategy by the French philosophical couple Mouffe-Laclau. They have dealt an intellectual deathblow to classical socialism and its focus on the working class, instead elevating the world’s disadvantaged, however disadvantaged, to the status of a revolutionary proletariat. Phase 1 of this process, the triumphant march of the disadvantaged of all nations through the institutions of free states and societies, has been successfully completed. What now follows, according to Tettamanti, as phase 2, is the absolute claim to political power and, on the way there, the rejection of the democratic, federalist and constitutional containment of violence and power.

The publicist Gerhard Schwarz analyses the affinity of intellectuals with utopias. He rejects as insufficient the accusation that intellectuals lack practical orientation. Rather, he identifies errors of thought and illusions in intellectual work on the transition from utopia to strategic goals. This ultimately leads to a frightening willingness on the part of intellectual and cultural circles to accept violence in order to achieve utopian goals. The fact that some of Gerhard Schwarz’s reflections are written in the form of a dialogue adds to the readability of the book. René Scheu, former head of the NZZ’s features section, and the long-serving head of the NZZ’s business section meet on an equal footing. Schwarz points out the difference between an open utopia, as outlined by Friedrich August von Hayek in his writings on social philosophy, and the deterministic models of society that characterise socialism and other less rigorously formulated totalitarianisms.

Finally, the historian Oliver Zimmer deals in detail with the phenomenon that ‘new liberalism’, in contrast to classical liberalism, wrongly assumes an ideal final state of social and thus historical development and thus adheres to a deterministic, even eschatological belief. Indeed, the idea of a globe dominated by a ‘global ethos’ and ruled by some unelected forces seems apocalyptic and, in the light of real conflicts, rather utopian. Oliver Zimmer holds up a mirror to the economic elite and its masterminds, accusing the ‘new-fangled liberals’ of axiomatic treason. Anyone who thinks and means freedom cannot avoid the uncertainty of any outcome and the indispensable sense of responsibility that goes with it. The certainty of the ‘new-fangled liberals’ and their distance from democratic corrective processes is a contradiction in terms and is devastating, especially when it is presented in technocratic terminology by a globalist priesthood.

1 Intellectuals: Who They Are and Where They Stand Today

Oliver Zimmer*

To anticipate my argument: What characterises intellectuals today is their lack of distance from power. Instead of fulfilling their role as critics of the powerful in state, politics and business, many intellectuals seek institutional influence and ideological unity. Since the 1970s, the intellectual milieu has also come to resemble a profession that reproduces itself through certain codes of conduct and sanction mechanisms. For many intellectuals, participating in the public debate on truth has become less important than defending supposedly non-alternative truths against criticism. This transformation has been made possible by the fusion of progressive and leftist utopias. What they have in common is a moral universalism that manifests itself in a contempt for bourgeois loyalties. At present, therefore, it is the bourgeois non-conformist who is best placed to play the role of critic of the powerful.

I said to the Rabbi: «I’ve found the truth. I don’t believe in God. I’m joining the Young People’s Socialist League.» So he looked at me and said, «Kid, you don’t believe in God. Tell me, do you think God cares?» Der Soziologe Daniel Bell anlässlich seiner Bar Mizva, 1932¹

* Contact: Centre for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA), Südstrasse 11, 8008 Zurich. Email: oliver.zimmer@crema-research.ch. I would like to thank Heinrich Christen and Tobias Straumann for their comments and feedback. Thanks to Gerhard Schwarz’s persistence, characterised by tact and perspicacity, I was persuaded to write about the intellectuals, for which I thank him warmly.

¹ Michael Weiss, «The Bell Curve», The New Criterion, vol. 41, no. 1. (2022)

Who They Are

The question of who intellectuals are and where they stand today opens up a vast field of study. The literature on this subject would fill a small library, even without the relevant source editions – for example, on the Reformation, the Glorious Revolution, the philosophes of the 18th century and the philosophes of history of the 19th century. Even a survey of the most recent literature on the subject would hardly be possible in the brevity required. Although the term “intellectual” – as a noun denoting a social role – was coined only at the end of the 19th century (by Emile Zola during the Dreyfus Affair), the intellectual roots that made the formation of intellectual milieus possible also contain much older historical layers.²
Anyone who wants to deal with the subject in a reasonably substantive way is therefore forced to make a choice. I would like to begin with a definition in order to create some order. Since I am concerned with a historical reconstruction with analytical intent, this definition should not be too narrow. I am happy to leave the question of who is a genuine intellectual and who is not to others. I am interested in how the self-image and activities of intellectuals have changed over time. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has formulated a definition that is appropriate to this question: “Simply put, an intellectual is a writer, artist or scientist who engages in political debate because of the expertise he or she has acquired in his or her field.”³ Why do intellectuals get involved? For Bourdieu, it is the need for a higher meaning that intellectuals serve in our secularised societies: “I think that the collapse of eschatological illusions … leads to a problem of meaning for many people, which affects young people as well as men and women of advanced age. Therefore, in spite of all the uncertainties, I prefer to launch a utopia than to abandon all those who suffer from this state of abandonment. “⁴

The willingness to leave the desk, the studio or the ivory tower, at least in the figurative sense, and to engage meaningfully in political debate – this is what Bourdieu sees as the role of the intellectual. How they tick or argue politically is irrelevant. There have been left-wing intellectuals as well as liberal or conservative intellectuals. Or were Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville or Michael Oakeshott not intellectuals? Although they are obviously not on the left and would hardly describe themselves as intellectuals, but rather as writers or artists, what they have been doing for decades fulfils Bourdieu’s definition of the intellectual, at least in part.⁵

It is significant that the question of political colour not only immediately arises in this context, but also always seems to elicit the same answer: intellectuals are on the left, according to the conventional image, which is based on the self-image of the political milieus that have historically set the tone. While the term intellectual is used as a kind of honorary title on the political left, it tends to arouse scepticism among liberals and especially conservatives. Even moderate leftists have repeatedly distanced themselves from intellectuals. The British writer Kingsley Amis wrote in the late 1950s: “I share a widespread suspicion of the professional crusader, the do-gooder, the archetypal social worker who knows better than I what is good for me. So it was precisely the disposition Bourdieu described as typically intellectual – the urge to create overarching, universal meaning – that the young Amis who had turned to the Labour Party disliked. On the other hand, he found the defence of his own interests (which he found in its most shameless form in the English Tories) almost reassuring.⁶

² Caspar Hirschi, Skandalexperten und Expertenskandale. Zur Geschichte eines Gegenwartsproblems (Berlin, 2018), Kapitel V.
³ Pierre Bourdieu, «The Role of the Intellectual», A Journal of Social and Political Theory, June 2002, no. 99, p. 3.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Michel Houellebecq, «Europa steht vor dem Selbstmord», NZZ, 27.09.2016. Thomas Hürlimann, «Ich bin in Berlin zum Patrioten geworden», NZZ, 30.07.2022.
⁶ Kingsley Amis, Socialism and the Intellectuals (London: Fabian Tract 304, 1957), p. 13.

Where they stand

But now to the question of how the consciousness and position of intellectuals have changed in recent decades. I would like to address this question by first giving the floor to two eminent scholars – the economist Friedrich von Hayek (1899 – 1992) and the historian Pierre Nora (born in 1931). Both discussed the situation of intellectuals in the light of their own knowledge and experience. In fact, they went one step further: they made more (in the case of Hayek) or less (in the case of Nora) explicit recommendations to intellectuals.⁷

Immediately after the Second World War, Hayek called on liberals to do what the socialists had done and develop a political utopia. Almost three decades later, the historian Pierre Nora recommended that French intellectuals loosen their close ties with state power and curb their pretensions to truth. While Hayek’s advice was therefore primarily concerned with the ideological cosmos of liberalism, Nora placed the relationship of intellectuals to power at the centre of his observations. Both saw intellectuals as indispensable in the conditions of modernity.

But to what extent has this advice been implemented?

In short, Hayek’s wish was granted. From the 1960s at the latest, part of the liberal movement began to develop its own utopia. Not because Hayek had urged them to do so, but because the willingness to pursue utopian goals was also pronounced in the liberal camp after the catastrophe of the two world wars. The fact that this has hardly been reflected upon by liberals up to the present day is an interesting, if little studied, phenomenon. Of course, these liberals did not take Marxism as their model, nor was it the classical liberalism advocated by Hayek that served as their guide. Rather, as I have argued elsewhere, it was the philosophies of history of Kant and Hegel. More precisely, it was the fragments of these philosophies that have been circulating freely in our latitudes for over a hundred years as a lost cultural heritage. Whether one had read Hegel in particular was irrelevant even then.⁸ Pierre Nora’s wish for intellectuals to distance themselves from power, on the other hand, was not to be fulfilled. The tendencies that had characterised the intellectual milieu since the educational expansion of the post-war period – the professionalisation of university education, the search for ideological unity – had become permanent.

⁷ Pierre Nora, «Que peuvent les intellectuels», Le Débat, no. 1 (1980), pp. 3 – 19. F. A. v. Hayek: «Die Intellektuellen und der Sozialismus», Schweizer Monat 1085 (April 2021), pp. 26 – 36. Hayeks Aufsatz war ursprünglich 1949 in den Schweizer Monatsheften erschienen.
⁸ Karl Poppers Bewertung des Hegelianismus als gesunkenes Kulturgut trifft unverändert zu «It is so much a part of their intellectual atmosphere that, for many, it is no more noticeable … than the air they breathe.» Karl Popper, The Open Society and ist Enemies (Abingdon: Routledge 2002 [1945]), p. 288.

Spaces Instead of Places: The New Liberalism and the Intellectuals

Hayek formulated his theses on intellectuals in an essay published in 1949 entitled ‘Intellectuals and Socialism’.⁹ He did so at the height of his intellectual creativity, at the time of his academic move from London to Chicago. Put simply, his argument was that a liberalism that specialises only in resolving factual issues is unattractive to intellectuals. This is because intellectuals have a pronounced weakness for systematic speculation, i.e. for theories that comprehensively explain our worldly existence. They long – and here the liberal economist Hayek agreed with the left-wing sociologist Bourdieu – for a guiding discourse that shows people a meaningful path into the future. And because intellectuals are important for a political movement, Hayek urged liberals, these experts on the here and now, to turn their attention to the day after tomorrow: ‘The courage to be utopian is a source of strength for socialism which traditional liberalism unfortunately lacks.¹⁰ Some fifty years later, James Buchanan repeated the call for a liberal utopia in a published lecture. He reminded his audience that classical liberalism did indeed have a ‘transcendent vision’, a ‘soul’ in the sense of a ‘spirit of life’ («animating spirit »).The model of this liberalism is the ‘shining city on the hill’: a free community whose cohesion is based on the individual freedom of its members.¹¹

Elsewhere I have called the movement that embraced a transcendent political vision after the Second World War ‘newfangled liberalism’. It was inspired by an ideology I have called the Kant-Hegelian novel of development.¹² While Kant saw progress in the creation of a just human constitution, Hegel saw it in the rise of a constitutional state led by a wise class of officials. In his lecture on the philosophy of history, Hegel explicitly attempted a theodicy, a justification of God. He wanted to determine the ‘final purpose of the world’ through the spirit of world history. The philosophies of history of the 19th century emerged from this historical novel of development. The English philosopher John Gray described its appeal as follows: ‘Progress promises liberation from time – the hope that the breathtaking ascent of our species will save us from insignificance. ‘¹³ Belief in human progress replaced belief in divine providence.¹⁴

The new-fangled liberalism that follows this development narrative has little in common with the classical liberal values espoused by Hayek and Buchanan. It is still the ideological complex that is today referred to as neoliberalism (usually in a catch-all way).¹⁵ The ideology of neoliberalism combines a moral commitment to a universal order with a critical distance from the nation-state, which is perceived as the most reactionary spawn of backward particularism. At its heart is the conviction that spaces constructed according to universal values are better able to maintain peace and prosperity than a world shaped by historical places. In Kant-Hegel’s novel of development, progress takes place as the overcoming of local living environments in favour of a cosmopolitan morality of space. Through global governance, the diffusion of soft law or the extension of supranational civil rights, democratically constituted communities are depoliticised – under the banner of a universal reason committed to justice.

Not that new-fangled liberalism would declare historical places – which range from small civil communities to the ‘imagined community’ of the nation-state (Benedict Anderson) – a problem zone across the board. They are always welcome as state administrative districts and as stages for tourist or folkloristic activities. As long as they renounce their traditional political rights and powers, they are considered unproblematic. After all, this is what new-fangled liberalism is all about: depoliticising an order that is perceived as ‘outdated’. Its proponents advocate the transfer of competences from politics to transnational courts, which implies a radical questioning of the liberal constitutional state in its classical (positivist) conception. In the past, one would have spoken of a transfer of the foundations of legitimate power or rule – in political terms, much more precisely.¹⁶

The new-fangled liberal utopia of the dissolution of borders was fuelled by the communications revolution and the political reforms of the 19th century. Prominent contemporaries in every Western country began to celebrate the supposed triumph of humanity over space and time. Its most prominent symbols were the railway and the telegraph. It is therefore no coincidence that the first apologists for the idea of a technologically induced ‘global village’ can be found in Victorian England, and that it was primarily non-conformist Protestant liberals who promoted this belief, often using religious metaphors.¹⁷ However, liberals in other countries, such as the German economist Friedrich List, also saw the nation-state as merely a milestone on the way to the establishment of a future (Christian-influenced) global community.¹⁸ Since the Second World War, this ideology has become increasingly popular in the West.

Since the Second World War, this ideology of space has been radicalised in a way that goes far beyond the actual structural changes that have taken place since then.¹⁹ In the wake of destruction and mass murder, a powerful doctrine has emerged: the crises produced by globalisation have since served to legitimise the call for more supranational solutions in economic, legal, environmental, security and health policy. The routine outsourcing of energy supply and national defence, which can no longer be glossed over since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is a striking example of the real historical consequeThe worldview that legitimises this process can be described as Hegelian, because its proponents assume that the dominant reality embodies progress par excellence. The fact that Hegel saw this in the nationally conceived state was a reflection of the times: the state, especially the Prussian-German state, was widely regarded at the time as the most modern apparatus of power by far because of its level of administrative technology. For this reason, and not because he wanted to ennoble the nation-state, Hegel used it to illustrate his philosophical construct. If Hegel were alive today, his favourite example would probably be the supranational statehood of the European Union, based on the technocratic ideal of enlightened absolutism. One indication of this assumption can be found on our bookshelves: When the once avowed Hegelian Francis Fukuyama was working on his thesis of the ‘end of history’, the owl of Minerva had already, if not abandoned the nation-state, at least put it under fierce competitive pressure.²¹

At this point at the latest, Schopenhauer’s judgement on Hegel’s philosophy of history should be taken to heart, for no one saw through the Swabian from Stuttgart who had been in the Prussian civil service more thoroughly than the philosophical outsider born in Danzig. According to Schopenhauer, Hegel’s central doctrine is that what prevails in political reality, by removing the basis for alternative communities, thus documents its historical necessity as well as its moral superiority. This relegates smaller regions – such as Hegel’s Württemberg – or entire parts of the world – such as Africa, India or the Far East, which Hegel knew only through scholarly rumours – to historical irrelevance – to the ‘waiting rooms of history’ (Dipesh Chakrabarty).

What makes me call this new-fangled liberalism a utopia? First of all, the fact that it postulates a secular narrative of salvation as a realistic diagnosis of reality. What it has in common with left-wing, Marxist or post-Marxist redemptive narratives – in addition to the ideology of universal demarcation and historical determinism – is a rejection of democratic control of state power. Although this rejection is seldom explicit, it necessarily follows from the logic of the worldview on which it is based. The reason why a section of the liberal movement has long favoured a powerful interventionist state in many areas – historically in culture and education (the ‘Kulturkampf’) and law and order, but nowadays in many other areas, including energy, the environment, social welfare and health – lies partly in its utopian core. This also explains why new-fangled liberal and left-wing groups – despite their opposing discourses – now vote similarly in many parliaments. And why these alliances, where the political system has no plebiscitary corrective mechanisms (i.e. in almost all Western democracies), favour coalitions whose programme drives up the state quota and encourages rent-seeking by excellently networked private and public actors.²²

Some contemporaries who define themselves as liberals may find my diagnosis irritating. Some may find it questionable. This should be discussed, if only because open and undogmatic discussion should be part of the liberal DNA. In any case, it would be in the interest of liberals to take a more self-critical look at their own history, without resorting to the popular clichés that still characterise the liberal self-image today. This would bring into focus the problem with which I am solely concerned: bourgeois liberalism today is in retreat compared to its utopian relative.

⁹ Hayek, «Die Intellektuellen und der Sozialismus».
¹⁰ Ibid, S. 32.
¹¹ James Buchanan, «The Soul of Classical Liberalism», The Independent Review, vol. V, no. 1 (2000), pp. 111 – 119.
¹² Oliver Zimmer, Wer hat Angst vor Tell. Unzeitgemässes zur Demokratie (Basel: Echtzeit, 2020), pp. 24 – 28. Siehe neuerdings auch das Vorwort und die ersten vier Kapitel in Bruno S. Frey, Oliver Zimmer, Mehr Demokratie wagen. Für eine Teilhabe aller (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2023).
¹³ John Gray, Stray Dogs (London, 2002), p. 194. Siegfried Kracauer, History. The Last Things before the Last (Princeton, 1969), p. 148-149. Siehe auch John Gray, «Agonistic Liberalism», Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 12, issue 1 (1995), p. 111 – 135.
¹⁴ Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven. Progress and its Critics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991).
¹⁵ Zum Thema äusserte sich kürzlich Harold James, «Neoliberalism and its Interlocutors », Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, vol. 1, no. 2 (2020), pp. 484-518.
¹⁶ Grundlegend zum Begriff des Rechtsstaats: Tom Bingham, The Rule of Law (London: Penguin, 2010); Jonathan Sumption, Trials of the State: Law and the Decline of Politics (London, 2019); Zimmer, Wer hat Angst vor Tell, Kapitel «Die neuen Priester». Siehe auch die beiden scharfsinnigen rechtsphilosophischen Kommentare von Peter Kurer: «Freiheit durch Recht», Schweizer Monat, Ausgabe 1031 (November 2015); «Recht: Vom Festland in den Treibsand», Schweizer Monat 1100 (Oktober 2022), p. 46.
¹⁷ Oliver Zimmer, «Die Ungeduld mit der Zeit. Britische und deutsche Bahnpassagiere im Eisenbahnzeitalter», Historische Zeitschrift, Band 308, Heft 1 (2019), 46 – 80; derselbe, «Ein Fortschrittsapostel der besonderen Art. Wie Matthew Arnold England erneuern und die Welt erlösen wollte», Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 07.09.2022.» Zu den USA, siehe Lasch, The One and Only Heaven.
¹⁸ Friedrich List, Das nationale System der politischen Ökonomie (1841).
¹⁹ Ausser man verwendet einen verdünnten Strukturbegriff, der die Wirklichkeit mit dem World-Wide-Web oder den Träumen ausgewählter «Global Leaders» gleichsetzt. Ein prominentes Beispiel einer solchen Konflagration liefert Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat (New Yourk: Penguin, 2005). Wer zum Thema Substanzielles vernehmen will, sollte es mit einer brillanten historischen Synthese versuchen: Christopher A. Bailey, The Birth of the Modern World (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).
²⁰ Frey und Zimmer, Mehr Demokratie wagen, Einleitung. Zur Auslagerung staatspolitischer Verantwortlichkeit, siehe Tobias Straumann und Oliver Zimmer, «Nur nicht ausscheren!», Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 24.10.2022.
²¹ Francis Fukuyama, «The End of History», The National Interest, vol. 32, no. 2 (1989), pp. 37 – 44. Auch James Buchanan identifiziert ein Abdriften vormals liberaler Milieus in jenes hegelianische Fahrwasser, das bereits im 19. Jahrhundert begann. Buchanan nennt sie die «Hegel-inspired idealists, who transferred personal realization to a collective psyche and away from the individual». Buchanan, «The Soul of Classical Liberalism», p. 115
²² Was diese Entwicklung in vielen Fällen legitimiert, ist eine eine Ideologie der Meritokratie. Zu diesem Phänomen siehe das wichtige Buch von Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become oft he Common Good? (New York: Penguin, 2019).

Self-domestication: the intellectual as a new status

Let’s fast-forward a few decades, from 1949 to the late 1970s. Now it was not only the Left that cultivated the field of political transcendence, but increasingly the growing movement whose representatives saw themselves politically – in the sense and spirit of the developmental novel described above – as liberal. What happened here, however, was not a strengthening of the bourgeois-liberal movement, but rather an ideological alliance under the banner of progress. There was a fusion of (Marxist or post-Marxist) left-wing and (Hegelian-utopian) liberal approaches. The concept of populism increasingly functioned as a magic word defining a friend-foe scheme. The warning of an allegedly omnipresent populism became an ideology of integration, through which left-wing and new-fangled liberal movements integrated themselves – ex negativo. At the same time, it helped to nip in the bud important national debates (on migration, for example, but also on health and environmental policy), or to relegate them to social media and the political extremes.

This led to the development of a progressive liberalism which today (including in Switzerland) continues to have an influence far into the former bourgeois popular parties, where it partly determines strategy and direction. Although its representatives speak in favour of the free market and the protection of private property, they also contribute to the expansion of state centralism in many areas. In terms of discourse, this tendency manifests itself, for example, in the widespread talk of a ‘patchwork quilt’ of cantons or cantonal elitism, which is even encouraged by some cantonal executive politicians. This is based on the idea that the right solutions are known a priori and that all that is needed is for the federal government to implement them quickly. No experiments at all! Just don’t get in the way. Those who think this way regard alternative proposals, if they take them seriously at all, as political firebrands.

Above all, however, the representatives of this progressive liberalism, together with the committed left, now form an important and often leading faction in the central institutions of state policy – in the media, universities, administrations, but also in leading business organisations and think tanks. This is precisely what the aforementioned Pierre Nora pointed out in a brilliant essay in 1980. At the time, Nora was probably already what one might call a bourgeois outsider. An intellectual with Jewish roots, he ran a research institute in Paris and was even awarded a professorship at one point. Nevertheless, he never lived the life of a pompous professor. As an executive at the Paris publishing house Éditions Gallimard, where he launched several successful series, he came into contact early on with the complicated and fascinating network of relationships between culture, politics, the market and society. This may explain why, as one of those border crossers who have always been rare in the academies, he was able to observe intellectuals from both inside and outside.²³

In the aforementioned essay, Nora explains the birth of intellectuals from the decline of the priestly class at the beginning of modernity. The philosophes of the 18th century, above all Voltaire, fought against the power of the Church with a secular vision of progress. At the end of the 19th century, the profession of intellectual was born in France. After the Second World War, the expansion of universities in the Western world brought about a profound change in intellectual self-understanding. The free-floating intellectual was replaced by the professor, especially in the humanities. Intellectuals increasingly derived their legitimacy from their affiliation to public universities and research institutes. They were specialists who, encouraged by the public prestige of their institution, increasingly acted as generalists. Their reputation as a milieu blessed with wisdom, which had preceded them, was soon borne without false modesty. Nora expresses his interpretation of this profound change in the following quote: We used to have an absolute monarchy and a republic of letters, today we have a state republic and a despotism of letters… There is a close link between the status of the intellectual and the fantasy of absolute power. This link must be destroyed.’²⁴

Caspar Hirschi, a historian of science who teaches in St. Gallen, recently came to a conclusion that is at least not dissimilar to Nora’s.²⁵ Although his study is primarily concerned with experts, his observations are also relevant to the subject of intellectuals. Hirschi concludes that the rise of the state-funded expert has weakened the core role of the traditional intellectual: that of the public critic, aware of the danger of milieu-specific patterns of thought. And he shows how politicians, embroiled in battles for popularity and legitimacy, tend to instrumentalise experts for their own ends. Take Switzerland’s energy supply, for example. A few years ago, anyone who dared to criticise the figures and forecasts of the department responsible as too optimistic was told: ‘If you want to mess with the ETH, that’s your business’. A single report, which was acceptable to the responsible department and its top officials, was declared to be fundamentally incontestable with regard to the prestige of ETH. And the representatives of the federally funded university played along.²⁶

What is surprising about this case, however, is not the strategic relationship between politics and science. What is surprising is the lack of reaction from the scientific community in Switzerland. An intact intellectual culture would have triggered a public debate here. Not only environmental scientists and physicists, but also economists, sociologists, historians and anthropologists would have been able to use their methodological arsenal to argue that several expert opinions are needed before decisions of such importance can be taken. But either the scientists themselves were too partisan to act as a critical public on this issue, or they preferred not to make a fuss despite their differing opinions. So as not to upset the university and political authorities? Because they define themselves as part of a social class that reproduces itself through the habitus of noble reserve? Because it is assumed that those who refuse to follow this ritual will be punished internally? Whatever the reason, in science the suggestion of unambiguity sooner or later leads to a loss of legitimacy. According to Hirschi, science ‘can only reduce its field of attack’ if its representatives succeed in assuming and fulfilling the role of public critic once again.²⁷

For this to happen, however, it is not only politicians who need to be careful not to present their appointed experts as unassailable. Scientists of various disciplines would also have to practise the kind of modesty that is taught at undergraduate level in serious universities. In particular, they would have to start presenting their calculations, hermeneutic exegeses and recommendations as what they are at best: a basis for public discussion, not the last word in wisdom; and certainly not ready-made recipes for politicians on a profiling trip. However, this is often not the case today, when some academics see their membership of government bodies as a mark of status.

To some extent, the image of a knowledge society based on consensus and absolute truths cultivated by politicians and the media also reproduces the myth that today’s universities have long cultivated internally. The two sacred cows of anonymised peer review and the large-scale state research funding programmes, which are run with enormous bureaucratic effort, are the central instruments. With these instruments of self-reproduction, universities legitimise not only their employment policies, but also their respectability in the eyes of the state and society. Hirschi also points to this relationship between science and politics in the final chapter of his study: ‘Science and politics can stylise experts in the media into a neo-aristocracy of the knowledge society until, as has already happened in Britain and the United States, popular anger, fuelled by the media, is directed against them. ‘²⁸

For some time now, the reference to the global orientation and intellectual openness of universities has also served as a corset to support this neo-aristocratic self-image. In Switzerland, too, university rectors routinely refer to internationality and cosmopolitanism as the outstanding hallmark of their institution. As proof, they usually point to staff recruitment and academic cooperation. However, the much-vaunted internationality of Swiss universities is statistically well documented: Anyone without a Swiss passport can be counted among the international students. It is also true, however, that the much-vaunted internationality, especially in the humanities – the situation is somewhat better in the natural sciences and engineering – is almost exclusively in German. At top British universities, for example, the situation is quite different.

More interesting than the claim to internationality, however, is the vice-chancellors’ statement that their universities are havens of intellectual openness and curiosity. Some long-serving university teachers who have retained a degree of intellectual independence will find this statement audacious. At least in my own experience, there are few organisations of comparable social importance where the critical outsider – i.e. the kind of person who does not think it unseemly to disturb institutional unanimity when necessary – is less welcome than in public universities. It would be wrong, however, to describe this tendency as brand new. Particularly on the European continent, it was often nationalist professors who set the tone at universities in the 19th and early 20th centuries – for example, by excluding sectarian minorities they considered unpatriotic or otherwise deficient – but in the 21st century it is the cosmopolitans who are in charge.²⁹

The debate on Horizon Europe, the EU’s mega research programme, has been an impressive demonstration of this. Let’s start with the facts: Despite a massive budget of almost 100 billion euros, very few applicants manage to secure one of the coveted grants from the European Research Council. Economic sociologists call this positional goods. Their incentive is that the majority of potential users are excluded from using them. It is an open secret that the successful projects are not always the strongest in terms of content. Moreover, not every researcher wants to invest a year or more in preparing a proposal, because the most valuable asset for a professor entrusted with research and teaching is still time. At Oxford, in my subject, it was often the most original minds that consistently avoided this type of research funding.

In Switzerland, “Horizon” was largely praised by scientists. Professors teaching abroad proved early on that, with a little more courage and commitment, it is also possible to criticise this type of collaborative research. The Belgian sociolinguist Jan Blommaert, for example, pointed out as early as 2015 that “Horizon” had a lot to do with politics and very little to do with science. The crucial passage of his commentary on the subject reads: “The paradox is clear: by joining the rush for competitive external funding, almost all universities in the EU will lose not only money but also extremely valuable research time for their staff. “³⁰ Among Swiss scientists, Nobel laureate Didier Queloz – Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy in Cambridge (UK) since 2013 and appointed part-time professor and head of a research centre at ETH two years ago – was a very professional voice who expressed a different opinion in “Horizon”: “We need to find creative solutions so that good researchers come to us or don’t leave. But as a scientist, I don’t base my decisions on what is decided in Brussels. That’s not how science works. We are less interested in money than in ideas and being able to work in an inspiring environment. “³¹

For some Swiss university rectors, however, there was little room for criticism. Before and after the Federal Council’s decision on the institutional agreement with the EU, they praised “Horizon” as the “gold standard in science”, the “Champions League” in which the Messi and Ronaldo of the scientific community compete in an elimination process for the world championship title. Excluding Horizon is like Roger Federer only being allowed to play in his home town of Gstaad. And in an interview with the NZZ, he compared it to classical music: the situation is “comparable to an orchestra from which musicians are removed one by one”.³² Without Horizon, the rectors agreed, Switzerland’s attractiveness as a research location would erode.

However, the problem should not be localised in the management of Swiss universities. By its very nature, modern university management is always also public policy. Rather, the central question is why there has been so little opposition from the thousands of academics involved in research and teaching at various levels in Swiss universities. The widespread absence of critical perspectives made it easy for university leaders and their political allies to create the impression that their point of view was the only reasonable one. In English, this is known as “groupthink”, which, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, means: “A type of thinking in which individual members of small, cohesive groups tend to accept the point of view that corresponds to the perceived group consensus. This is regardless of whether the individuals involved believe it to be reasonable, correct, or far-reaching. Groupthink has been shown to reduce the problem-solving effectiveness of groups.

At least the tenured professors could have rebelled. That would not have pleased their bosses, the deans and rectors, or some of their colleagues. But they would not have had to worry about their positions. So why all the silence? Although this is not an easy question to answer, I have a few suspicions based on my own experiences in England and conversations with Swiss colleagues. Three factors seem to me to play a role. Firstly, there are scientists who have done very well with Horizon, either because they actually do very good research, know how to fit in well with the thematic guidelines, or because they have simply been lucky. Secondly, in my experience, the type of highly qualified conformist is predestined for today’s university: Someone who values Horizon as an object of prestige or as an important element of Swiss European policy fits better into the university culture than someone who holds views on these issues that seem iconoclastic to most professors. Thirdly, the climate in our universities encourages self-censorship. Some do it because they want to protect themselves from attack, or because they see public debate on research policy issues as something unworthy of the academic profession.

This last factor is particularly important, I think, because there should be no place for self-censorship in universities per se. In our private lives, we may impose a form of censorship on ourselves for understandable reasons: because we don’t want to offend, for example, or because we hope to gain a personal advantage. But that is the private sphere. But a democracy thrives on people’s willingness to criticise in public, and universities have a role to play here if they are not to degenerate into ideologically predictable biotopes. But this is often lacking today. This became clear to me when I spoke to professors from various Swiss and British faculties for a newspaper article. They all thought that research programmes like Horizon were anything but a boon to science. And why is that? Because they turn out to be time thieves because of the huge administrative burden. Because they restrict freedom and entrench hierarchies. Because they create dubious incentives. Because they waste a lot of talent and resources. These were some of the reservations expressed.³³

But all my interviewees insisted on not being named. They had expressed views that they would not want to express publicly, at least not before they retired. In this respect, Horizon is not an isolated case, but the tip of the iceberg. The result is an opportunism that reduces the willingness to discuss social problems openly. Or as the Encyclopaedia Britannica puts it in wonderfully technical terms: because “groupthink” has been shown to reduce a society’s efficiency in solving problems.

²³ Aufschlussreich dazu: Pierre Nora, Jeunesse (Editions Gallimard, 2021).
²⁴ Nora, «Que peuvent les intellectuels», p. 6.
²⁵ Hirschi, Skandalexperten, Expertenskandale.
²⁶ Samuel Tanner und Marc Tribelhorn, «Die Schweiz in der Energiekrise: Wie gross ist die Schuld von Doris Leuthard?», Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 27.08.2022.
²⁷ Hirschi, «Skandalexperten und Expertenskandale», p. 327.
²⁸ Ibid., p. 323. Siehe auch die Kritik von Bruno S. Frey und Margit Osterloh, «How to avoid borrowed plumes in academia?», Research Policy, 49 (2020), pp. 1 – 9.
²⁹ Diese Grundtendenz scheint mir gesamthaft bedeutsamer als die Exzesse der selbsternannten Denkpolizei, die vor allem an englischsprachigen Universitäten, besonders in den USA, immer noch auf dem Vormarsch ist.
³⁰ Jan Blommaert, «Rationalizing the unreasonable: there is no good research in the EU». https://alternative-democracy-research.org/2015/06/10/rationalizing-theunreasonable- there-are-no-good-academics-in-the-eu/. Aus der Schweizer Wissenschaft sind mir vor allem zwei kritische Stimmen bekannt: Caspar Hirschi, «Was uns das Rennen zum Südpol über den aktuellen Streit zum EU-Forschungsprogramm Horizon lehrt», NZZ am Sonntag, 19.02.2022; Tobias Straumann, «Die Rede von der Erosion der bilateralen Beziehungen mit der EU lenkt vom eigentlichen Problem ab», NZZaS, 29.01.2022. Siehe auch Oliver Zimmer, «Horizon Europe: Ein Segen für die Wissenschaft?», Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 25.02.2022.
³¹ NZZ, 02.09.2022.
³² NZZ, 28.02.2022.
³³ Auch Blommaert nennt all diese Faktoren in seiner Diagnose: Blommaert, «Rationalizing the unreasonable».

Conclusion

The legitimacy of intellectuals is based on a consistent distancing: not from people, their needs, interests and preferences, but from power, wherever it is concentrated. This power includes dominant world views. Intellectuals should therefore distance themselves not only from nationalist myths, but also from their progressive cousins, the universalist utopias of progress. It was probably once necessary for intellectuals to take a path that led them away from the bourgeois world and into the realm of far-future speculation. The one temptation to which they often succumbed is well known in the social sciences: Suddenly even highly intelligent people confuse observable reality with an abstract ideal type that is given the status of an ought.

Of course, this was not what Hayek and Buchanan meant by utopia. The two great political economists would hardly have seen the progressive liberals as a blessing for humanity. We know from Buchanan that he saw the drift of the liberal milieus into Hegelian waters as a gutting of classical liberal principles. What both share with a left-wing sociologist like Bourdieu is a weakness for utopias. In Bourdieu’s case, this was due to the fact that he saw left reformist movements as a thorn in the flesh of a bourgeoisie trimmed to maintain its status; and that he assumed that a “certain desire for transcendence” acted as a driving force.34 In Hayek’s case, it was more a matter of a “certain desire for transcendence”. For Hayek, it was rather the longing for an order to protect the capitalist order in the long term.35 And for Buchanan, it was the orientation towards the Puritan image of the “shining city on the hill”, which for him was an indispensable source of inspiration for a strong liberalism. Without this openness to transcendence, he was convinced, liberalism lacked the power to create life.

The problem seems to me to be that utopias, by virtue of their transcendental charge, inevitably call for the dissolution of boundaries. In doing so, they are unleashing institution-breaking forces that are difficult to correct. Buchanan described the new-fangled liberals as apostates from classical liberalism. He saw them as converts to a Hegelian collectivism, believers in the state and ready to impose a postmodern cure on the liberal democratic constitutional state. Suddenly liberal intellectuals have become Hegelian believers.

I find Buchanan’s diagnosis as original as it is incomplete. And also – as far as liberalism is concerned – insufficiently self-critical. Above all, it seems to me to be based on an underestimation of the absolute claim to truth that political utopias unfold in practice – whether under the banner of the left or the liberal. In our times, when the classical constitutional state is being gutted, liberal intellectuals should once again increasingly see themselves as critics of power. The real intellectual of today, provided he is not on the left or “doubtful about progress”, is the bourgeois non-conformist: the one who is sceptical on all sides. His task is to look with curiosity at the places to which his bourgeois existence binds him. Such an attitude is not an expression of narrow-minded provincialism. Rather, it stands for a more sophisticated kind of universalism.

The accusation that such people have nothing constructive to contribute to the world is based on a misunderstanding that we should regularly try to dispel.

³⁴ Bourdieu, «The Role of the Intellectual», p. 3.
³⁵ Siehe Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Harvard UP, 2018).

2 Is Liberalism Too Sober?

Gerhard Schwarz

A handful of thoughts on Friedrich August von Hayek, George Stigler and James Buchanan*

Revised and expanded version of a text published under the title “Friedrich August von Hayek’s early insight into the appeal of socialism for many intellectuals” in Schweizer Monat, No. 1085, April 20-21, p. 37.

In 1949, an essay by Friedrich August von Hayek on the inclination of intellectuals towards socialism appeared in the spring issue of the University of Chicago Law Review under the title “The Intellectuals and Socialism”. The text quickly attracted a great deal of attention and was published in German in the Schweizer Monatshefte at the turn of the year 1949/1950. The Second World War was still fresh in people’s minds, Ludwig Erhard’s great work of liberation, the German economic and monetary reform, was less than a year old, the Cold War had long since begun, and Hayek’s bestseller, The Road to Serfdom, which had been translated into over 30 languages, was less than five years old.

Hayek recognised early on the great influence of intellectuals. And he took the liberals to task.

At a time when National Socialism had been defeated and International Socialism was spreading throughout Eastern Europe, Hayek wondered why intellectuals were so susceptible to socialist views. He assumed that intellectuals had neither evil intentions nor selfish aims, but honest convictions and idealistic aspirations. For him, as he often points out, they make a fatal mistake about crucial issues of economic and social interaction. In the title of his late work from 1988, “The Fatal Conceit. The Errors of Socialism,” he reiterates this view. He believes in enlightenment, in the power of his arguments, and is therefore almost more critical of those representatives of the status quo who see left-wing intellectuals as neurotic troublemakers than he is of the left-wing intellectuals themselves.

By “intellectuals” Hayek does not mean the truly original thinkers, the scholars and experts. For him, intellectuals are “professional second-hand dealers in ideas”, or, less pejoratively and less metaphorically, all those who act as professional communicators of ideas, who can speak and write eloquently, and who have a flair for new ideas. He mentions teachers, journalists, writers, actors, artists, the liberal professions, as well as many scientists and doctors who are “listened to with respect outside their actual field of expertise”. Hayek would probably not see these intellectuals as the only real international community today. He wrote his analysis before globalisation, which has turned managers in particular into a globally networked caste.

On the other hand, there is no reason to revise the judgement that intellectuals are more powerful than is generally perceived. They shape public opinion and policy through published opinion. George Stigler, like Hayek a Nobel laureate in economics, revisited this theme 14 years later in his essay “The Intellectual and the Marketplace”, and it is no less relevant today.

According to Hayek, people who are lively, intelligent and original, and who tend to be hostile to the social order, are particularly likely to choose intellectual professions. This is one explanation for the leftward drift of intellectuals. The other lies in the attraction of socialism because of its speculative character, since, in Hayek’s estimation, intellectuals judge factual questions almost exclusively on the basis of a few basic concepts and general ideas. Because they were generalists or expressed themselves outside their core competence, it was important to them that new ideas could be easily integrated into the world view that seemed modern and progressive to them. Hayek’s examples of intellectual fashions are less time-bound than one might expect. He mentions the belief in the benefits of the full democratisation of all possible institutions, the desire for material equality based not on experience but only on theory, and the belief that human society can be controlled and shaped in a similar way to the forces of nature.

For me, two of Hayek’s ideas in “The Intellectuals and Socialism” are still important and valid today. One is the observation that once freedom is achieved, it is quickly taken for granted and no longer valued. The decades-long decline of liberal values in Europe and the US can probably be explained in part by this. And secondly, there is the assessment that the lack of appeal of liberalism for intellectuals has to do with the fact that it is seen as ‘practical’, ‘reasonable’ and ‘realistic’. This does not apply to the distorted picture that left-wing intellectuals paint of neoliberalism, which they portray as heartless and unbridled, totally radical turbo-capitalism. It does, however, apply to those liberal forces in governments and parliaments who point out the laws of economics and, with their sober admonitions of discipline, put the brakes on the rush for feasibility of all statists. “What we lack today,” writes Hayek, “is a liberal utopia. By this he means a radical liberalism that preserves much of the existing institutions but does not simply defend the status quo, that does not end up in a watered-down semi-socialism, that does not pay too much attention to the sensitivities of powerful interest groups and, above all, that does not limit itself to what seems politically possible today but develops the courage to create a utopia.The many liberal think tanks that have sprung up around the world since the 1960s are partly an expression and a consequence of this idea.

Personally, however, I believe that, paradoxical as it may sound, intellectuals also have problems with liberalism because, with its focus on rules and processes rather than results, it seems somehow anaemic and does not appeal to the emotions. Another great liberal thinker and Nobel laureate, James Buchanan, has also addressed this, arguing that liberalism should focus more on its soul, “The Soul of Classical Liberalism”, the title of a 2000 essay. He approvingly adopts Ronald Reagan’s much-used Puritan metaphor of the “shining city on a hill” to make the point that liberalism should and could be not only a blueprint for cool heads but also an offer to warm hearts.

3 The pursuit of paradise is disastrous.

René Scheu | Gerhard Schwarz

A casual exchange on presumption, moralism and intellectual resentment*.

* Slightly edited version of a text published in the NZZ am Sonntag, 31 July 2022, p. 26.

René Scheu and Gerhard Schwarz take aim at their own profession. Why are intellectuals prone to moral arrogance and political utopias? And does this type of person even have a future?

René Scheu: Dear Geri, in a nutshell, what kind of person is an intellectual?

Gerhard Schwarz: There’s no such thing as a short answer. There are at least three different views of intellectuals.

RS: Oh well. Which one?

GS: The first, sober description is: the intellectual works intellectually, is educated, knows a lot, thinks a lot, struggles for answers and contributes impartially to public debate. He is strong in his field, but not a specialist idiot. You find such people in art and literature, in the sciences, in journalism, in the churches. They are rare in business and politics. Their horizons are wide. And they are no strangers to doubt.

RS: I’m going to interject here. Admit it: that’s also a self-description.

GS: Maybe. But do I really want to be an intellectual? It’s not just an honorary title.

RS: What is it?

GS: According to one perspective, intellectuals are seen as desk-bound perpetrators, theorists who are often out of touch with reality and usually know-it-alls. They comment on many topics, even those they know little about. Moreover, they believe they know what should be done but are hardly capable of implementing it themselves. Recently, German intellectuals contributed to this image with open letters calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine and opposing arms deliveries.

RS: Hold on. While I don’t share their stance, I think it’s absolutely fine that they intervene with a letter—we have too little, not too much, free exchange of opinions.

GS: Of course. But when intellectuals, leveraging the weight of their fame without any self-doubt, comment on matters so complex that even experts struggle to grasp them, I find that presumptuous, if not outright abusive. Successful writers or Nobel laureates in medicine often understand as much about economic growth or monetary policy, armament issues, or traffic as the proverbial man on the street.

RS: But they can write—and they should do just that. Your position reminds me of Nassim Taleb, a bestselling author and entrepreneur. He believes that intellectuals are academically educated people without special expertise and without “skin in the game,” who mainly seek the recognition of their milieu.

GS: He has a point—though his criticism also applies to himself. After all, he is also an intellectual.

RS: But anyone who speaks out can always be wrong. And it cannot be that only so-called experts get to express their views in the end—such an intellectual technocracy would be terrible.

GS: I neither said nor meant that. I only mean that one shouldn’t rely solely on gut feelings; expertise is needed. That brings me to the third view on intellectuals. Nowadays, whole legions equate academic education and leftist attitudes with intellectuality and feel morally and intellectually superior to the masses. They often live—proud that they don’t have to earn their livelihood in the “dirty” market—off government employment or support, that is, off the taxes of the rich whom they despise. And when they make wrong statements, it doesn’t hurt them; rather, they gain additional attention.

RS: Yes, the moralists. However, your grand liberal sermons in the NZZ weren’t free from moralizing either. So, you too are, in your way, a passionate advocate, an intellectuel engagé!

GS: I argued in a liberal newspaper from a liberal perspective and tried to lay out the reasoning for this view. Many actual or would-be intellectuals, on the other hand, pretend that their judgment is a pure expression of knowledge, untouched by any political stance. I find that cowardly—if one belongs to the outraged left, one should also have the courage to be transparent about it.

RS: Nobel laureate in economics Friedrich August von Hayek called intellectuals “second-hand dealers in ideas.” They popularized the thoughts of others, overestimated their intellect, and were prone to all sorts of utopias, especially socialism. Is that a reason for the leftward bias of many journalists?

GS: Certainly. Many intellectuals have a penchant for utopia. The socialist vision of what humanity should be offers this more than the realistic image of humanity in liberalism. Moreover, the simplicity of statist thinking appeals to intellectuals. They are often generalists or speak outside their core competence—so they find it easier to deal with seemingly simple state solutions than with the complex, unpredictable market economy.

RS: The liberal Ludwig von Mises went even further in “The Roots of Anti-Capitalism”: intellectuals felt superior to businessmen in terms of education, intelligence, and morality but tended to earn less. This led to resentment and a disdain for profit-driven thinking and the market economy. Too simplistic—or brutally accurate?

GS: Simple, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean “wrong.” Resentment certainly plays a role in the leftward bias of many intellectuals. They like to display selfless idealism—and at the same time, believe that in a just world, they should be much better compensated.

RS: Utopians measure the real existing state of the world against an imagined ideal state. Is this the greatest intellectual error of the publishing profession?

GS: Be careful with superlatives. But it is undoubtedly a significant intellectual error that is among the primary causes of the market economy phobia of many intellectuals, despite all empirical evidence. Because the evidence is clear: Real existing market economies are more peaceful than autocracies, have a richer cultural life, better protect workers, do more for the poor, and operate more cleanly. Pragmatic striving for improvement is human. But striving for paradise on earth is disastrous. It is no coincidence that the positive utopias of Thomas More or Plato are totalitarian states.

RS: On the other hand—anyone who doesn’t dare to imagine a freer and more just society cannot improve the existing one.

GS: Yes. The crucial point is, however: One should never be so convinced of a vision that one is willing to use force or coercion to achieve it. Liberals trust in evolution, spontaneous order—and the power of better arguments.

RS: Finally, a provocative thesis: I believe intellectuals are an endangered species. Do you know why?

GS: No.

RS: The intellectual belongs to the old, elite public sphere. They are being replaced by two figures in the fragmented, broad public: the activist and the influencer. The former put their ego at the service of world-saving idealism, the latter work on the image of their own ego to spread trendy memes among the people. How do you feel about them?

GS: There have always been activists, rebels, union leaders. I have nothing against them, as long as they are not closed to reason. As for influencers in this specific, narrower sense, I’m not receptive to them. Most of them have a short half-life anyway. But of course, we are all occasionally influenced by celebrities in our consumer and leisure behavior.

RS: I fear we are two intellectuals of the old kind. Should we perhaps try our hand as influencers after all?

GS: You go ahead; you could pull it off. I’m too old for that.

4. The Discourse Dictatorship of Left-Wing Progressivism

Tito Tettamanti

The Gradual Social Revolution

The 20th century was a tragic one for Europe. The great historian and convinced Marxist, Eric Hobsbawm, fittingly titled his book The Age of Extremes. This century was marked by two wars that escalated into world wars, brutal for the combatants and devastating for the populations, wars that claimed 80 million lives and destroyed nations. The century also witnessed three wretched ideologies that led to various dictatorships with barbaric consequences (including one of the wars) and the disgrace of racial extermination camps.

Among the three ideologies—Marxism, which found its practical implementation in Leninist Communism, National Socialism, and Fascism—the first had by far the greatest influence. This can be attributed to three reasons. First, it is based on a theoretical construct derived from the work of one of the greatest thinkers of the 19th century, Karl Marx, while the other two were partly improvised and, in many ways, underdeveloped. Second, it had a longer period of “application,” from at least the Russian Revolution of 1917 until the implosion of the USSR in 1991, and it established itself globally, albeit with adjustments in economic order (as seen in China) to avoid implosion like the USSR. Third, it still has devoted followers and supporters. To call someone a Nazi or a Fascist is an insult today, with the term Fascist often deliberately misused to discredit an opponent’s arguments. This is not the case with Communists. For instance, some might say: “Stalin certainly meant well, but unfortunately, he was mistaken.” Additionally, on a utopian level, equality and the protection of workers and minorities from exploitation are themes that inspire and are difficult to challenge on a purely ideological basis. A theory grounded in extensive thought and such ideals can be attractive to the intellectual world because it vilifies anything that deviates from it and because the utopian motivation tends to overlook the obstacles presented by reality.

The Discriminated as a Revolutionary Class

However, the fragility of Marx’s economic theses has been pointed out by scholars of various orientations, such as Eugen Böhm von Bawerk, Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, or Paul Samuelson. Karl Popper even spoke of superstition. The comparison between the systems of market economy and planned economy, and their respective outcomes, is ruthless: on one side, criticized inequality in wealth; on the other, equality in misery. On one side, freedom, albeit with imbalances; on the other, the fear of regime reprimands and imprisonment. The successes of the market economy were reflected—albeit differently—in the world of labor. The working class realized that they were better off in the capitalist world than in the communist paradises. It is no wonder that workers were accused of having become bourgeois and were mostly unwilling to carry out the class revolution.

Some Marxist intellectuals understood that the dictatorial authoritarianism of the Communists, the sacralization of the infallible party, and the flattening of society into the grayness of poverty could no longer be defended. Communist authoritarianism had to be abandoned, and other ways had to be sought to undermine the foundations of the democratic system, which Marxist intellectuals see as the basis of the liberal, market-based society in its various forms. Alternative forms of authoritarianism, sometimes not explicitly labeled as leftist, had to be found, other supposed evils for which bourgeois society could be blamed, and other masses that would take up the fight since workers were no longer willing to fight for the class revolution.

One of the subtlest minds in this regard is undoubtedly Herbert Marcuse; his most representative work is One-Dimensional Man (1964). While he criticizes the relations of production in Russia and Soviet authoritarianism, he simultaneously levels heavy accusations against capitalist society. In his view, it is the source of alienation for individuals, reducing them to consumption automatons who can only choose from the available offerings but live in a world of inequality and are subjected to the compulsion to consume. In this sense, democratic society would also be totalitarian because it allegedly excludes the possibility of an alternative. Marcuse and the Frankfurt School, with Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, inspired the 1968 movement, especially the French May ’68, but also student revolts in Germany and the USA. The year 1968 was also marked by other events with certain similarities: in China, Mao’s “Red Guards”; in Mexico City, the police shooting young demonstrators; in Czechoslovakia, the revolt against the communist authorities followed by the Russian invasion, perhaps one of the first steps towards the decline of the USSR; in the Middle East, the rebellion of young Arabs disappointed by the loss in the “Six-Day War.”

Discrimination Everywhere

One slogan of that time, “Power to the imagination,” was coined by Marcuse. The torch of anti-authoritarianism, the fight against the order under the guise of the struggle against bourgeois-liberal power, was taken up in the 1970s by French philosophers Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Lacan, who confused freedom with a free pass for anything and everything. In the 1980s, the political philosophy couple Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau formulated a new vision of the struggle against the liberal order. With more political sensitivity than the other mentioned philosophers, they sought to achieve the social revolution described by Marx but relied, so to speak, on other strategies and troops. In their work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, they argue that the possibility of a workers’ revolution—which they consider to be long bourgeoisified—is an illusion.

They aim for a revolution, but the revolutionaries who are to be mobilized and represented are no longer the workers but the actually or allegedly discriminated against: immigrants, Africans, precarious workers, women, the LGBT community, climate protectors, pacifists, and all those who question Western civilization. The liberal society is to be hollowed out and deconstructed from within, i.e., dissolved by gaining ideological dominance over the political and social science debate, the discourse. The goal is power—power through discourse dominance, and the “uprising” of the discriminated is the means to that end. The path to this “uprising” involves several stages: first, a state is sought in which as many people as possible feel discriminated against. Intellectuals help create this sense of an allegedly unjust state in many areas of our society. Those who denounce injustice almost always have the better hand in discourse theory, i.e., in political debate.

Neglected Power of Ideas

If we look at the prevalence of “wokeness” today, we cannot help but be impressed by the foresight of the now-deceased Laclau and his wife Mouffe. The latter has since become an icon of the post-Marxist left. The current dominance of the left-progressive discourse and its influence on society, also thanks to the (sometimes even unconscious) help of the media, is undeniable. And because parties are reflections of societies, left-progressive thinking also directly influences and shapes political parties—often without much notice.

The left-progressive hegemony in political discourse is, unfortunately, also a result of the cultural and intellectual weakness of the groups that should be defending the liberal order and the values of our civilization. Engaged in the daily bureaucratic administration of society and its institutions and involved in many entrepreneurial tasks, they have overlooked the power of ideas. As a result, they have little to offer in response to the pressing questions posed by societal developments. Even worse are those who try to secure their position in society by disguising themselves as progressives. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. This group includes the Davos pilgrims who hypocritically kneel before Greta, as well as the preachers of stakeholder rights who ignore Milton Friedman’s words to offer a convenient excuse for highly paid managers when the economic results of their companies are unsatisfactory. The right-wing spectrum of society, the liberals, and the conservatives are thus weak not only because of their neglect of ideas but also because of hypocrisy.

If we look at the political landscape in Switzerland, it is concerning how much media, political scientists, party presidents, and parliamentarians focus primarily on election forecasts, Federal Council candidates, seats in the Federal Council, and internal disputes—barely in substantive terms, but purely arithmetically. People talk about concordance and forget that parties have changed alongside societies, with consequences for the possibilities and necessities of political configurations within the framework of concordance.

The Parties in the Grip of the Progressive Mainstream

It is not without consequences that today in the SP (Social Democratic Party), the progressive, revolutionary left is in power and has gained dominance in the discourse with its emphasis on omnipresent discrimination. The SP is no longer the party we have known for decades as a democratic, reformist force that wants to participate in the power of a fundamentally accepted society in order to achieve meaningful and useful social reforms. The SP leadership and its base are now mostly radical. This is especially true for the younger generation. All Juso (Young Socialists) presidents, and of course the current co-presidency of the SP, are clearly left-progressive and have seen themselves as future career politicians since their student days. They entered politics without real knowledge of the working world, enjoy participating in debates on political issues, but their opinions are more influenced by ideology than by knowledge of the real world. The Tschudis, Ritschards, and Strahms are now a tiny minority. In Switzerland, and even more so in Italy and France, the Social Democratic Parties, with whom Europe’s democratization was built after the wars, exist at best in fragments. We must be aware: The theories of Laclau and Mouffe do not aim at participation in power, but at total power. Concordance, as it corresponds to multicultural and democratic Switzerland, is incompatible with left-progressive thinking. It aims to revolutionize today’s society—and with it, the structures of power in the state.

Now let’s turn to the FDP (Free Democratic Party). Disputes between liberals and radicals have always been known here. But the deep rifts in this once proud, “state-bearing” party today have nothing in common with the earlier struggles. Under the presidency of Franz Steinegger (1989-2001), the party was influenced by the ideas of the 1968 generation. It shifted to the left in the hope of being modern and not losing voters to the socialists. Today, we can see that this was a mistake. The results of recent votes, such as on the CO2 law, the embarrassing internal party dispute over the EU, the positions on globalization, and much more show that a part of the leadership, as well as the base, tends toward urban “mainstream attitudes,” indeed to attitudes strongly influenced by the progressive left. The party, which should have been the first to defend the values of a liberal, bourgeois society, lacked its own original solutions to the challenges of the present. It was too intellectually absent, being too occupied with the tactics of power. It seems that under the new president, Thierry Burkart, the party is about to return to a line that better corresponds to its historical role.

That the Catholic-Conservatives (K. K.) have given up the first “K” is understandable. The distancing from the second “K,” because they were ashamed to be considered conservative, was, on the other hand, a great political mistake. By doing so, they gave away part of their own voters to the SVP (Swiss People’s Party). Now, the justified concern of the former CVP (now The Centre) is survival, i.e., obtaining enough votes to justify a seat in the Federal Council. It is therefore understandable that its president, one of the best minds in our parliament, behaves very tactically in his positions today—always with an eye on the main goal: Primum vivere, deinde philosophari (First, live; then philosophize). The rifts with the left-wing Catholics, who in various countries pact with the post-communist left, cannot be overlooked. The conservative soul and its values seem to be experiencing a revival in new, sometimes confusing movements in Europe today. However, it is questionable whether these sentiments will play a role within the democratic and national framework.

The SVP has skillfully gathered the conservative and nationalist sentiment of the popular, traditional Switzerland, thanks in part to the aforementioned mistakes of the former Catholic-Conservatives, and has taken on the defense against left-progressivism. On certain issues, such as Europe and immigration, where it firmly represents a large part of public opinion, it has even regained dominance in the discourse. As the largest party in Switzerland, it now faces the obligation not only to focus on individual issues but also to develop the intellectual capacity to act as a powerful catalyst for bourgeois values and ideas.

The Greens and Green Liberals are phenomena of more recent times. Both parties have developed parallel to the left-progressive cultural debate and are intellectually close to it. This is no coincidence: the entire environmental movement, led by Greta Thunberg, sees itself as “discriminated” and “threatened” by traditional structures and acts in an anti-authoritarian manner. As such, they are an important, if not always conscious, aid to the targeted overthrow and struggle against today’s society. This is very explicit in books like “Nature against Capital. Marx’s Ecology in His Unfinished Critique of Capitalism” by the Marxist Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito.

Reclaiming Dominance in Discourse

This partly unsettling political landscape is significantly shaped—more than most realize—by the left’s dominance in discourse, even a discourse dictatorship, on many societal issues. In a liberal democracy, everyone has the right to fight for their ideas, but this presupposes the possibility of debate. However, does the discourse dictatorship of the “discriminated” still allow debate? Unfortunately, no. It is often impossible to represent other ideas. They are blocked even before they can be considered, as they are deemed unworthy of debate or confrontation. The “other opinion” outside of the “debateocracy” is not considered respectable and is not allowed to be represented in the battle of ideas. Ultimately, this means that there can no longer be a battle of ideas. It is a form of totalitarianism—and the end of the spirit of the Enlightenment.

What is alarming is the attitude of many so-called intellectuals at universities. In the USA (but also in Europe), professors are forbidden from expressing their opinions because they do not align with contemporary progressivism. Or because they want to raise doubts about the left-progressive mainstream. Or because they have recognized the true motives of the progressive left and want to address these precisely. The cases are numerous and well-known. The same is happening in the media. We are now at a point where journalists are dismissed if they hold a different, critical opinion (New York Times). A conservative is nothing more than a disguised “fascist,” who does not deserve the dignity of intellectual exchange. At the same time, moralism has gained the upper hand everywhere. Analyses and judgments are replaced by bias.

How should the “bourgeois” (do they still exist?) and their parties react? Will the few economic liberals and true order politicians continue to argue for decades instead of recognizing where the real “enemy” lies? Will the bourgeois parties be able to set aside their fruitless disputes and form a united front against left-wing progressivism? Against a progressivism that pursues the same statist goals as the former communists, albeit with a longer breath and milder methods? A progressivism that aims to revolutionize both societal and power relations?

We are all convinced that all societies should develop for the better. This is precisely what capitalism and the social market economy have achieved in liberal democratic societies. It is an astonishing success that has led to almost the entire society participating in the wealth that has been created. In democratic systems, the majority even decides how the created wealth is distributed. If we believe that our improvable system will continue to develop positively as it has in the past centuries, we must now oppose theories and movements that, through other, sometimes disguised post-Marxist ways, seek to fundamentally overturn our society. The post-Marxist thinking that underlies these movements should be unmasked and fought in order to regain dominance over the discourse.

Ultimately, most of those who feel discriminated against are being instrumentalized by those Marxists and post-Marxists who, following in the footsteps of Mouffe and Laclau, are working to deconstruct the open liberal society. In doing so, they contribute to the spread of these ideas without realizing it.

We are in a time of crises and upheavals. On the one hand, we have to master remarkable technological progress. Today’s challenges are extreme longevity (if one believes some biogeneticists); the conquest of the universe to create new places for the successors of Homo sapiens; the use of artificial intelligence as a great help (and not as a ruler). On the other hand, we know nothing better to do than to change language, introduce a new racism, revolutionize sexual behavior, deny genetic differences, abolish culture, and change history. We are ashamed of Dante, Shakespeare, Christopher Columbus. While the influence of Jewish-Christian monotheism is declining, there is a return to forms of pantheism or paganism. Extreme positions in ecology, the appreciation of nature, and animal protection conceptually recall pagan rituals.

The solutions to such a difficult future are based on two incompatible paradigms. One will have to prevail because otherwise, coexistence will become increasingly contentious and unbearable. Will the paradigm prevail that is based on freedom within order and thus on evolutionary progress, which does not disdain history? Or will the paradigm of left-wing progressivism triumph, which seeks a total revolution of manners and, in this way, a hollowing out of liberal society? To ask these questions is to become aware of responsibility.

The Authors

• René Scheu (born 1974), Dr. phil., studied at the Universities of Zurich and Trieste; publicist and philosopher; former head of the culture section of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ); managing director of the Institute for Swiss Economic Policy (IWP) at the University of Lucerne.
• Gerhard Schwarz (born 1951), Dr. oec., studied at the University of St. Gallen and Harvard Business School; publicist and economist; former head of the economics section of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) and director of Avenir Suisse; owner of Schwarz auf Weiss; president of the Progress Foundation.
• Tito Tettamanti (born 1930), Dr. iur., was a lawyer, politician, founder of the fiduciary company Fidinam, and later worked internationally as an entrepreneur in the finance and real estate sectors.
• Oliver Zimmer (born 1963), Ph.D., studied at the London School of Economics and the University of Zurich; historian; former Professor of Modern European History at the University of Oxford; Research Director at the Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Zurich.