The Aporias of Liberalism Before the Digital Age

This chapter addresses the aporias of liberalism before the digital age. It draws on authors such as Benedict Anderson, Freud, Taylor, Raz, Sandel, Jasanoff, Kahneman, Rawls, Elizabeth Anderson, Marx, and Girard. Section 7.2 addresses liberal individualism and its insufficient consideration of social and cultural imaginaries as framing of rational choice. Section 7.3 discusses the downsides of liberal international collaboration: nonliberal actors are strengthened and distributive justice is linked with closed nation states. Section 7.4 examines the problem of maintaining state neutrality under the conditions of multiculturalism. Sections 7.5 and 7.6 explore the problem of accumulation on economic and social levels using Marxism and mathematical network theory, which contradicts liberalism’s core assumption, that the emergence of spontaneous order in civil societies has an emancipatory effect. In this context, the development of ‘private government’ is addressed. Section 7.7 discusses the downsides of a homogenous global order regarding ecology and international security.