How did liberalism become so dominant?
In a word, it delivered the goods. Liberal regimes were better able to mobilize labor, capital, and raw resources over long distances and across different communities. Conservative regimes were less flexible and, by their very nature, tied to a single ethnocultural community. Liberals pushed and pushed for more individualism and social atomization, thereby reaping the benefits of access to an ever larger market economy.
The benefits included not only more wealth but also more military power. During the American Civil War, the North benefited not only from a greater capacity to produce arms and ammunition but also from a more extensive railway system and a larger pool of recruits, including young migrants of diverse origins — one in four members of the Union army was an immigrant (Doyle 2015).
During the First World War, Britain and France could likewise draw on not only their own manpower but also that of their colonies and elsewhere. France recruited half a million African soldiers to fight in Europe, and Britain over a million Indian troops to fight in Europe, the Middle East, and East Africa (Koller 2014; Wikipedia 2018b). An additional 300,000 laborers were brought to Europe and the Middle East for non-combat roles from China, Egypt, India, and South Africa (Wikipedia 2018a). In contrast, the Central Powers had to rely almost entirely on their own human resources. The Allied powers thus turned a European civil war into a truly global conflict.
The same imbalance developed during the Second World War. The Allies could produce arms and ammunition in greater quantities and far from enemy attack in North America, India, and South Africa, while recruiting large numbers of soldiers overseas. More than a million African soldiers fought for Britain and France, their contribution being particularly critical to the Burma campaign, the Italian campaign, and the invasion of southern France (Krinninger and Mwanamilongo 2015; Wikipedia 2018c). Meanwhile, India provided over 2.5 million soldiers, who fought in North Africa, Europe, and Asia (Wikipedia 2018d). India also produced armaments and resources for the war effort, notably coal, iron ore, and steel.
Liberalism thus succeeded not so much in the battle of ideas as on the actual battlefield.
There is a great deal of historical confusion here. During WW I both France and Britain were colonial powers, which is about as anti-liberal as you could want. There were socialists in the French government, but the Third Republic entering WW I offered fewer benefits to its people than did Imperial Germany. In England, the Monarchy and House of Lords still ruled the country, and there were few social benefits to the British people. A. J. P. Taylor in his “History of World War I,” reports that during war rationing British working families got more food and coal than during the preceding peace time. Britain did not get a socialist party until after WW II.
What delivered the goods in both WW I and WW II were command economies similar to the Fascist, Nazi and Communist economies. Fascism was not a bad word, and Mussolini was not a bad guy, until after Hitler attacked Stalin.
Bob… Your analysis is nutzo-crazy wrong. And, on so many levels…
Firstly, the characterizations of “liberal” vs. “command” economies: That wasn’t what was going on, nor was it really the major distinction. In Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, industry got it’s marching orders from the state, and there was immense influence about who did what from the political side. The same thing happened in the US and the UK, but there was one huge difference: In the German and Italian “command economies” there was precisely zero oversight of what went on. In the US and UK, there were Congressional and Parliamentary subcommittees that continually went after corruption and bad practices–If nothing else, the fact that such things were possible kept the bad actors in line. Harry Truman was made Vice President in no small part because they wanted to shut him up–The Truman Committee did oversight on the war effort that had no equivalent in either Germany, Italy, or Japan. Also, didn’t happen in the Soviet Union.
So, distinguishing the economies by characterizing them as “liberal” vs. “command” ain’t at all worthwhile. The only true “command” economy in the war was the Soviet one, and even that developed some interesting features in opposition to the “command” idea–A read of Red Plenty, with attention paid to the role of people like the fixer Chekuskin will serve to disabuse you of the idea that commands given necessarily resulted in products delivered.
It would be more accurate to state the difference as being between a semi-open society, and a closed one. In the Axis pact, there was just about zero feedback; if there was corruption and collusion going on in Germany, the only way it would get fixed is if it somehow got the attention of Hitler, or one of the other sub-Fuehrer figures. That was the nature of it all–Not a bug, but a feature of Hitler’s fascination with the Fuehrerprinzip. Same in the other two Axis economies, while in the UK and the US, you had constant criticism of what was going on with war production and everything else in the media, while the legislative bodies in those countries performed a check-and-balance role that simply wasn’t present in the rubber-stamp process in the Axis. Bad ideas and production stupidities got stopped in the Allied nations, but nothing equivalent went on over on the Axis side. I mean, can you imagine Hitler having to answer to anyone, over using critical transportation assets to haul Jews off to the camps, while the military was starving for supplies?
On the Axis side, there was no corrective feedback in the economy. On the Allied side, there was tons of it–And, that was the difference. Not “liberal” vs. “command”, at all–Outside of the Soviet Union, it was all a hybrid of the two, anyway.
As well, “Fascism was not a bad word, and Mussolini was not a bad guy, until after Hitler attacked Stalin.”? Dude, I’ve got a bunch of Italian friends who would likely be more than happy to introduce you to a rope and a tree, for that one. The Fascist secret police and all the other police-state apparatus that Mussolini put in place, plus his inept attempts to recreate the Roman empire in Africa? He was an international pariah back in the 1930s, and aside from the lionization he got from the US media and the Democrats (FDR really wanted to be either him or Hitler, with no irritating Constitutional restraints to worry about…), nobody liked his ass at all.
I think you’re either badly informed about that historical era, or you’re delusional, to be quite honest.
“Liberal regimes were better able to mobilize labor, capital, and raw resources over long distances and across different communities. Conservative regimes were less flexible and, by their very nature, tied to a single ethnocultural community.”
I am very suspicious of this analysis because I don’t see any tables of numbers showing logistics quantities.
“During the American Civil War, the North benefited not only from a greater capacity to produce arms and ammunition but also from a more extensive railway system and a larger pool of recruits, including young migrants of diverse origins — one in four members of the Union army was an immigrant (Doyle 2015).
The North had more bankers, railroads, defense profiteers, etc. I am not sure if that is meant by “liberalism.” I note that the citation to “Doyle” goes to:
http://time.com/3940428/civil-war-immigrant-soldiers/
I love studying the history of technology, and the history of logistics, but I don’t see “liberal” as a useful term of analysis. Maybe I need to go back to more basic textbooks.
G, you’re not wrong.
This is a lousy article, with worse reasoning. The ideological slant and grasp of the economies they’re talking about are straight out of an imaginary realm that never existed.
Case in point–Pre-WWI Imperial Germany and the UK: You want to make the argument that the Germans were liberal, in the classic sense? LOL… Not hardly. And, the German pre-WWI economy was rapidly overtaking the UK, even with the Empire considered. That was a huge reason the war happened, in the first place…
No, the information used in this article’s arguments is incomplete, and the reasoning is specious where it talks about “liberalism” making the economy greater. In actual point of fact, the Germans and Central Europeans were rapidly overtaking both the French and the UK, and where that would have ended, nobody knows–Because the damn fools blew it all up. We’re only now starting to see a bit of the growth and modernization happen that rightly should have been taking place during the first half of the 20th Century across Eastern Europe.
This is an entirely inadequate and flatly wrong in many respects article, I’m afraid. The analysis is based on sheer imagination, not real facts.
Hell, if liberal values make for such great things, how do you account for the rapid strides made by forced industrialization under Stalin and other Communist despots? Yes, those improvements weren’t capable of competing, past a certain point, but they were made.
Of course, I would like to know where Russia would be today, absent the damage done by WWI and the Communists. That’s an alternate economic history I’d love to see the actual results of–While a part of me says that the Russians would have munged it all up, per their historical wont, I also suspect they might have gotten a hell of a lot further than the Communists got them.
There is more to Germany’s losses in the World Wars than liberal vs non-liberal governments. In WW2 Hitler’s losses were due primarily to poor strategy and over extended supply lines. Blitzkrieg while effective when invading neighboring countries did not scale up successfully when invading Russia. Hitler refused to develop 4 engine long range bombers to soften the fronts but instead used raw manpower that was consumed in battle. Eventually Germany’s human and industrial resources were drained to nothing.
Gaikokumaniakku says,”…I love studying the history of technology, and the history of logistics…”
I bet you would really, really enjoy this book. It’s great.
The Pursuit of Power
Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000
William H. McNeill
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo5975947.html