Thatcher-Reagan Free Market Faith: Rise of Populism and Fall of Nationalism
Harvard Philosophy Professor Michael Sandel and Hebrew University History Professor Yuval Noah Harari discussed the market economy, tyranny of meritocracy, populist uprising, democracy, nationalism, and nation-states. This article touches upon the premise of British former PM Margaret Thatcher’s and former US President Ronald Reagan’s market faith, its causes, and consequences.
The reason behind populist backlash is the growing inequality. During the last four decades, stress was put on the market economy, basing this on Reagan-Thatcher notice that “market mechanisms are the primary instruments for achieving the public good” (Sandel, 2020, p. 62). All citizens disregarding their race, class, religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation were to be granted equal opportunities for this to work well. Then, everyone would have had a fair shot to compete in the market. “Eliminating discrimination and expanding opportunity would make markets fairer, and enlisting a wider pool of talent would make markets more productive” (Sandel, 2020, p. 63). The stress on merit and deservingness grew. “The meritocratic ethic was implicit, at times, in the free-market conservatism of Thatcher and Reagan” (Sandel, 2020, p. 62). This is the beginning of the rise of meritocratic ideals with the promise that those who work hard will rise, but it dramatically failed.
“What you earn depends on what you learn.” This is the meritocratic justification of inequality. Though a very narrow one, education became a tool to help eliminate inequality by supporting the meritocratic system and market economy. In his book “The Tyranny of Merit” Sandel claims that some fifty years ago rating of the college didn’t matter much; people would choose the University closest to their home, but now ranking and the University brand name is of primary importance. “Fewer than one in five Americans went to a four-year college and those who did tend to enroll in places close to home” (Sandel, 2020, p. 18). Now, priorities shifted. Rich parents know that a high-ranked University diploma will make their children more competitive in the market and bring prestige, recognition, esteem, and honor. 2019 scandal in the US is an excellent example to prove that. It revealed how the rich, trying to get their children into top Universities, hired a college-counseling consultant William Singer to help find fraudulent ways to get guaranteed admissions. “One family paid Singer $1.2 million to get their daughter admitted to Yale as a soccer recruit, despite the fact that she did not play soccer. Singer used $400,000 of the payment to bribe the obliging Yale soccer coach, who was also indicted. A television actress and her husband, a fashion designer, paid Singer $500,000 to get their two daughters admitted to USC as bogus recruits to the crew team (Sandel, 2020, p. 13).
Singer explains that there are three main ways to get accepted to an Ivy League University: the ‘front door,’ ’the side door,’ and ‘the back door.’ The front door is when the applicant applies, showing all the real grades and achievements, but this also requires much financial asset (e.g., SAT prep courses, private tutors, training in elite sports, college admissions counseling). “SAT scores closely track family income. The richer a student’s family, the higher the score he or she is likely to receive” (Sandel, 2020, p. 16). ‘Side door’ means that the applicant goes through all the admissions processes and is evaluated by merit, but at the same time, the applicant’s family might, for example, donate money to the University’s fund. For example, Donald Trump donated $2.5 million for his son-in-law to be admitted to Harvard despite a modest academic record (Sandel, 2020, p. 15). From all three only the ‘back door’ is the option that guarantees 100% admissions and is all about 100% corruption. This scheme best reflects the dark side of meritocracy.
The illusion that successful admissions are applicants’ own achievement, and fully deserve it makes them look down on others and blame them for their failure. Thus, winners become proud of themselves, and the losers are humiliated because ‘your failure is your fault.’ This makes the meritocratic justification of widening inequality angering and irritating.
This approach “converted it from an inequality of income and wealth which is bad enough to an inequality of honor and esteem,” Sandel claims(Harari, 2021).
Sandel recites the fact that “about 2/3 of the population in the US and in most European countries don’t have a University degree,” which makes clear that this approach doesn’t work well, if at all (Harari, 2021).
Rise of Populism
The gap of inequality brings populists to power, and this is a global issue. The reason behind the rise of these powers is the failure of mainstream center-left and progressive social democratic parties to implement their historic mission. Sandel claims that “their historic mission was to reign in the excesses of capitalism and hold it to democratic account. That is the traditional mission and purpose of center-left or social democratic parties” (Harari, 2021). They failed to deal with the rising inequality brought by the globalization of the last four decades, and this had a dreadful result in terms of the rise of right-wing populism (Harari, 2021). Harari claims that the “populist wave is a global phenomenon. You see the rise of authoritarian populists all over the world (e.g., Brazil, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, my home country Israel, Philippines, India)” (Harari, 2021). I can definitely add Armenia, my home country, to this list too. The question that he asks is “why does the anger result in undemocratic forces rising?” In the end, the victims of populist governments are not the elites, the rich or the educated but rather the poor and minorities.
Populist governments are a big issue worldwide. As a result of the 2020 elections in the US, Trump was removed from power, but Sandel wants to stress the number of people who voted for Trump in 2020.
He asks, “why despite the disaster of the last four years, despite his [Trump’s] bungling of the pandemic, 70 million people wanted this to continue” (Harari, 2021).
Populists coming to power with close to people’s heart notions justify all of their failures by continuously pointing fingers at the actions and decisions of the elites and the governments of the past. This creates a strong confrontation between the people who elected them and the others (e.g., elites, past governments). Living in Armenia, I can clearly claim that this is exactly what is happening to us too.
“When I look at the world today, one of the other things that strikes me about the rise of populists is that they are not nationalists. They are not really patriotic at all. They are trying to break the nation on purpose into hostile tribes. You see it with Trump in the US, with Bolsonaro in Brazil, with Netanyahu in Israel, in so many places. They are tribal leaders, not nationalist leaders,” says Harari (Harari, 2021).
Populist governments thus weaken nation-states. If people of the same nationality are divided by the excess of anger because of existing inequality that the populist leader doesn’t resolve but uses to accumulate and grow immoderate hatred towards the other citizens, they no longer perceive the country as something belonging to everyone. The feeling that the country belongs to all the citizens vanishes, and the belief that it belongs to the corrupt and greedy elites expands, thus deepening the divide between the people. People stop loving and caring for their fellow citizens but rather hating them. Living in the same country, holding the same citizenship, these people no longer feel connected. They simply don’t feel that they have a shared fate.
Starting from the beginning, Harari explains that the idea of nations is a narrative or a story invented by humans to create and sustain bigger communities. Previously, people used to live in small groups of 50, 100, or 150, and they all knew each other very well. That’s why they cared for each other. “I think that nationalism is one of the best inventions of humankind,” claims Harari (Harari, 2021). The idea of nation and nationalism itself enables you to care and be loyal to the people that you have never met and will probably never meet, but still, you are willing to pay taxes so that somebody on the other side of the country would get good healthcare, education, and other benefits and social guarantees. “Nationalism can turn ugly when the main thing becomes hating the others and not loving us,” says Harari (Harari, 2021).
“The main project of the nation, the main difficulty of the nation historically is not fighting against foreigners, that’s easy. The difficult thing is to get 50 million people or, in the case of India, more than a billion people with different languages and religions, and social class to nevertheless feel connected. That is the big project of nationalism. People like Trump, and Bolsonaro, and Netanyahu work against this project,” says Harari (Harari, 2021).
Democracy Trembles
Nationalism is the basis of the nation-state. Democracy is a tool to sustain and nourish it. Sandel claims that “the fate of democracy has been closely connected to the nation-state.” Territories, borders, and everything inside the country is the goods and capital belonging to its people, which means the obsolescence or seeming obsolescence of nations. However, with the globalization of the last four decades, people freely move across the borders. Thus, Sandel claims, ”if the nation matters less and less, if national identities matter less and less, and if national governments are less and less effective in governing themselves in the face of a global economy, then what becomes of democracy?” (Harari, 2021).
Harari tries to explain the tight connection between democracy and the nation-state and claims that
“you cannot have democracy, at least in the world of today, without a strong sense of nationalism because if you don’t feel connected if you don’t feel that you have a shared fate with the other people in your country, there is absolutely no reason in the world to accept the verdict of democratic elections. It makes sense only if you think that they care about you, and you care about them. If you think that your political rivals may be stupid even, but they are not evil, and they are not there to get you. If that’s the case, then there is no democracy. It can be a dictatorship, and it can be a civil war but not a democracy” (Harari, 2021).
The demonization of political rivals with the excessive use of hate speech is extremely destructive for the concept of nationalism and nation-state. The reason for the start of the fall of democracy, Harari explains by claiming that populist leaders divided the country into two camps. “There are the real people, my supporters, and there are the enemies of the people, all those on the other side of the political aisle. They are not really part of the people. They are enemies. They are traitors. This runs to the contra of the nationalism project, and this is one of the reasons that democracy is in trouble, is collapsing” (Harari, 2021).
Inability to solve the issue of inequality, lack of critical mind to question Reagan-Thatcher belief in free markets, and meritocratic ideals without the guarantee of fair opportunities not only didn’t reduce the inequality between social classes but deepened it. Other than inequality of income and wealth, inequality of honor and esteem was added. This brought to power populists that divided the people into two and accumulated excessive hatred towards each other. It trembled democracy globally and is the reason behind the weakening of the big nationalist project.
References
Sandel M., (2020), The Tyranny of Merit. Penguin Random House. ISBN 978–0–141–99118–4
Yuval Noah Harari (2021). Michael Sandel and Yuval Noah Harari in conversation. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NbChMEoGFE