the moral dimension of their lives. On the one hand, they ended up living in a system that educated them less about morals and citizenship, yet, on the other hand, heavily influenced by commercial publicity, powerful retail chains, and mass media with their own ideas of what lifestyle ought to be. There were, of course, differences inside the West, but in the core of the Western world – the United States and the United Kingdom – neoliberalism had made the spirit of the Founding Fathers and the liberal ideal of emancipation fall on many citizens like a worn-out cloak. It surely was not always better in the past, but many wondered whether the abandoning of the ideals would help build a better future.
Decadence
Wealth without virtue breads decadence. Decadence in its turn is the precursor of decline. Historians who had studied the rise and fall of great powers saw resemblances between the internal weakening of the late Roman Empire and the West. They were also familiar with the words of the Roman historian Sallust and theologian Saint Augustine that the abolition of external adversaries and the removal of the necessity to be alert was followed by disasters arising from prosperity, greed, and inequality.24 So, if the collapse of the Soviet Union already presented an opportunity, it would at best be a pause in which to remedy these internal economic problems.25
Even such pause was considered by some to be more a curse than a blessing. The problem of a breathing space, contended the historian Paul Kennedy, is that one feels less pressured to tackle challenges.26 He made a comparison with the late-Victorian age, during and after which Britain constantly staggered from one crisis to the next. Decline is not necessarily a collapse. Decline can also be slow, with moments of recovery that allow politicians to dismiss the warnings of critics. Decline can be subtle, encouraging leaders to go on with laissez-faire policies, and citizens to enjoy their prosperity without worrying about the erosion of their productivity and wealth. The harsh confrontation with reality is thereby postponed for another generation or so. Kennedy, who in earlier years investigated the phenomenon of imperial overstretch, the fact that global interests were growing too much in comparison to the means to secure them, now highlighted the moral dimension. Like many historians who wrote about the fate of great powers, he saw decadence as the main threat, describing his country drifting lazily downstream, putting out the boathook to avoid an occasional collision.
Moral decay was also what the influential economist John Kenneth Galbraith saw around him. He had previously outlined how a small part of private America had become outrageously rich, while the public sector remained outrageously poor. The problem, he saw, was economics. But the cause was the dissipating of virtue and ethics, the erosion of the values that America’s Founding Fathers embodied. Materialism among youngsters was on the rise, as figure 2.1 shows. Other virtues, like the pursuit of a meaningful philosophy in life, retreated. “Whether the problem be that of a burgeoning population and of space in which to live with peace and grace, or whether it be the depletion of the materials which nature has stocked in the earth’s crust and which have been drawn upon more heavily in this century than in all previous time together, or whether it be that of occupying minds no longer committed to the stockpiling of consumer goods,” he advocated, “the basic demand on America will be on its resources of intelligence, and education.”27 Hence, without educational renaissance, without moral renaissance, and without morals and virtue, no power can go on to lead.
Figure 2.1 The purpose of studying among American university students (%)
Source: UCLA Freshmen Survey.
Whole generations had learned to hate communism, yet not to understand democracy. In 1990, only about 6 percent of American high school students had a proper understanding of their country’s institutions. The majority did not know that Congress made laws, or what checks and balances were about.28 The philosopher Alan Bloom found a dismal lack of critical thought. He called it the closing of the American mind.29 American students might not have faced the propaganda and the censorship, but they were not sufficiently equipped to treat information critically either. Hence, they could be more inclined to advance understanding through basic instincts than through logic and critical thinking. Absent the clear rival of the Cold War, citizens were left with abstract ideas of good and evil, and a poor understanding of the common good.
There was more. Francis Fukuyama, a professor who had famously declared the victory of liberalism, cautioned that the victory of liberalism could be devastating. Instead of being triumphalist, his essay “The End of History” predicted that this moment would presage a somber time. The more liberalism and postmodernism advanced, he asserted, the more they would elicit nostalgia for the time when history existed, the time that called for daring, courage, imagination, and idealism.30 Human beings, he tried to say, expected more of life than just economic calculation, the solving of technical problems, and the satisfaction of consumer demands. This harkened back to the thinking of the European existentialists in between the two world wars. They saw in the progress of materialism a risk of both radicalism and decline, of a society of primitive socialized men without identity, sometimes leisurely consuming, at other times feverishly searching for an affirmation of one’s corner.31 Thus he wrote:
The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one’s life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period, there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed.32
Western liberalism became materialism. Progress was measured by the degree not to which the world advanced human dignity, but to which it encouraged people to consume. Pope John Paul II stated that if Marxist materialism had failed to succeed, liberal capitalism was bound to fail to meet the profound aspirations of humanity. “Some have seen the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe as a victory of liberal capitalism and now see the latter as the only road, forgetting the very limited contribution it makes to a full human life, let alone the devastating consequences it has for the third world.”33 French President François Mitterrand put it thus: “It would be disastrous to assist one cultural model to become universal. Will we allow that the law of money, the forces of technology, will succeed in what totalitarian regimes failed to do?”34
Even die-hard proponents of capitalism stated that the advance of Western economic and political values would not succeed without a deeper moral and cultural code. “It needs the energies of the creative imagination as expressed in religion and the arts,” Irving Kristol stated. “It is crucial to the lives of all our citizens, as of all human beings at all times, that they encounter a world that possesses a transcendent meaning, in which the human experience makes sense.”35 Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset posited that spreading democracy could provoke a backlash. Promoting economic liberalism is important, he stated, but not enough. Democracy requires inclusive prosperity, meritocracy, culture, civic education, moderation, and emancipated citizens. He warned: “Do not count on all the world’s democracies lasting.”36
Others took as evidence of the moral crisis the growing inequality, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. A leading economist calculated that the richest 1 percent had amassed 70 percent of the rise in family income in the 1980s. Wallace Peterson found the real income of a worker in 1990 to be 20 percent lower than in 1973.37 Newsweek ran an article that scathingly confronted America with its poverty. “Nineteen nations have better infant mortality
