The Decay of Liberalism

In the previous two parts of this series, Peter Ramsay argued that the promotion of the vulnerability of citizens is a political ideology that has come to dominate capitalist societies. It is a curious feature of contemporary vulnerability-driven politics that, despite the censoriousness of the woke middle classes, the repressiveness of the Covid lockdowners and the warmongering of the Russiaphobics, these vulnerability-driven campaigns are often identified with people who are labelled, and think of themselves, as ‘liberals’. Here Ramsay argues that this is not a mistake. Today’s ideology of vulnerability is a decadent form of liberalism that has arisen from the historical working out of the contradictions within liberalism. Democratic self-government provides the only way out of this decay.

Vulnerability as Ideology Part Three: The Decay of Liberalism