Abstract
In the aftermath of the Cold War, a strange melancholy hovered around the West. Both liberals and socialists expressed their discontent about the orientation of western societies and the absence of new, radical ideals that would explore new horizons. This chapter suggests that the interpretation of the post-Cold War discontent must be grounded on the intellectual trajectory of the growth ideal. The pursuit of incessant economic growth should be seen as the offspring of three distinct developments, all of them involving liberals and socialists. The first development was the connection of economic growth with private consumption, the second was the rejection of the challenge of limits to growth while the third pertained to the liberal victory over socialism and the rise of growth liberalism in the 1980s. Nevertheless, the domination of growthism co-existed with the diachronic suspicion of both liberals and socialists toward the “shallowness” of consumerist culture. The utopian consensus on the necessity of eternal growth was sown with seeds of moral doubt. The utopian radicalism of growthism was not recognized or celebrated, a development that paved the way to the unanimous proclamation of the “end of ideologies” in the aftermath of the Cold War.
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Notes
- 1.
Throughout this essay, I avoid the term “conservatism” since in my view, the concept suffers from thematic and temporal hyper-extension and is thus irrelevant to the post-cold war intellectual landscape. The focus of this study does not allow for a thorough discussion of this issue, but, since the term is widely used, some brief remarks are necessary. It is obvious that contemporary conservatives have (almost) nothing in common with counter-revolutionaries of late eighteenth century in terms of concrete political demands: interventionist monarchy is dead, aristocracy even more so, while the political authority of established churches has declined or disappeared.
- 2.
Although no synthetic study currently exists, the anti-utopian sentiment has been detected (Maier 2000: 830).
- 3.
Similarly, Judt (1996: 117–8).
- 4.
- 5.
As mentioned above, the designation of growthism’s distinct sense of historicity is an analytic construct employed by the historian. As was expected, the ideologists naturalized their utopian project inscribing it in their diverse narratives of “‘progress’ and/or self-evident “economic necessity.”
- 6.
This interpretation dominates even the latest studies despite their criticism of previous “top-down” approaches. See, for example, Gianmarco Fifi (2022).
- 7.
A representative list of neoliberal concrete demands can be found in Friedman (1962, 35–6).
- 8.
For another example of right-wing reaction, Corthorn (2019, 65).
- 9.
The emphasis on neoliberalism’s later history has obscured its origins and foundational demands, hence the persistent “economistic” misconception that “the ideological core of neoliberalism consolidated throughout the 1970s and was centred on the faith in the self-regulating capacity of free markets and their superiority vis-à-vis any other allocative and distributive mechanism in upholding the individual’s rational pursuit of wealth” (Ferrera 2014, 424).
- 10.
For the role of international organizations, see Schmelzer (2016).
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Zarikos, I. (2023). On Utopia and Melancholy: Liberalism and Socialism at the End of the Cold War. In: Guy, S., Okan, E., Boullet, V., Tranmer, J. (eds) Liberalism and Socialism since the Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41233-2_8
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