May 29, 2008
In his After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State Paul Gottfried argues that the contemporary liberal managerial state does not leave people alone, is neither indifferent to their values nor afraid to exercise power for the sake of overriding and changing them, and is manifestly not a broker among competing interests. As the Rudd Government in Australia indicates, the liberal managerial state is in fact an imposing system of power, backed by a huge public sector, by lower and middle class recipients of public assistance, and by media, journalistic, and expert defenders.
Popular support for specific programs and acquiescence in others is, however, combined with dissatisfaction with the whole. People no longer believe the regime’s rhetoric of freedom and democracy; it is too obvious that government ignores the will of the people and presents justifications for its policies that are false or contradictory.
Gotffried holds that populism is the principal current challenge to the liberal managerial state. The response of neoconservatives, communitarians, and the religious Right to the overwhelming success of managerial
liberalism has been to construct a social criticism that, as Gottfried points out, concentrates on cultural, moral, and spiritual issues in isolation from social realities.
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