Khalil Ali Haidar
Will the future Egypt be the next democratic state built on a liberal system? Or will some form of state control, centralised moderation and compromise solutions feature in its economic and social policies?
What lessons did the Egyptians learn from their experience of Muslim Brotherhood rule? What will the Egyptian voter do to ensure that the Muslim Brotherhood and totalitarian movements do not come to power through the window of free, democratic elections after they were pushed out of the race as an outcome of events that began on June 30, 2013?
In January 2014, I was in Cairo visiting a book exhibition. I browsed through books and booklets from the famous booksellers’ market, Souq El Azbakeya, displayed in the exhibition.
Some of the books provided me useful information. I was pleased when I saw an informative brochure titled ‘Liberal Democracy: Focus and Problems, published twenty-two years ago, in 1993, by Dar El Shorouk Publications.
What struck me was that the brochure presented information in an interesting way, and its author was the prime minister in the interim government, Dr Hazem Al Beblawi.
I will try in this article to present Dr Al Beblawi’s take on liberalism, as a prelude to addressing books by thinkers who have praised or criticised liberal democracy in the Arab world.
Arab libraries have huge numbers of books and articles on liberalism, schools of democracy, and the challenges of applying their principles in the countries of the West and in Asian countries such as Japan and India.
In the Arab street, and among Arab intellectuals, there is a well-known split over the feasibility of liberalism, the ability of democracy to solve the Arab world’s problems, and the compatibility of these two principles with our traditions.
The Arab world began showing interest in liberalism after 1990. The Soviet Union and the socialist bloc began collapsing around that time, and in 1990, Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq attacked Kuwait, sparking a global crisis and a major war.
The media and intellectuals then heaped criticism on regimes led by dictators. They also turned their attention to the principles of democracy, liberalism and related matters.
Al Beblawi says in the introduction to his work: “Democracy has become an issue of time in a large number of countries. In spite of that, it has lots of definitions and diverse ways of application, like the concept of people’s democracy or democracy of the masses, that has allegedly been overstepping formal liberal democracy in order to achieve real democracy, but then, out of the blue, people’s democracy reveals its blatant face.
“Democracy is not a reflection of peoples’ rights and demands. At the same time, fascination with democracy and liberalism is increasing in communities that have lived under oppressive totalitarian regimes. However, we are starting to glimpse some semblance of boredom and anxiety in respected Western democracies.
“Moreover, we have found that some of the totalitarian regimes’ previous attempts to gain liberation and establish democracy resulted in chaos, barbarism and racism similar to tribalism, as happened in some countries in central Europe and some republics of the former Soviet Union.” (P. 7)
The ideas of liberal democracy took many years to mature in Europe. By the time of the American Revolution in 1776, and the French Revolution in 1789, there was a widespread belief that the path to democracy had been opened and there was now no going back, but the nineteenth century saw many totalitarian regimes.
Then the twentieth century saw fascist, Nazi and dictatorial regimes emerge. Human beings remained naive, as Francis Fukuyama wrote in his famous book, The End of History and the Last Man, about the worldwide spread of liberal democracy and free market capitalism.
We often ponder about the course of events in eastern Europe after 1990, and we rarely stop analysing the fall of the tyrant “right-wing” systems in the past two decades.
In 1974, the regime of Salazar collapsed in Portugal, followed by the fall of Franco in Spain in 1975. The military regime in Greece had suffered the same fate in 1974. In Latin America, which is known for coups and dictatorships, the regimes fell in Argentina (in 1982), Uruguay (1983), Brazil (1984), and Chile (1990).
This wave then reached Asia, where the South Korean regime fell in 1987, after the fall of the despotic Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. This then spread to Africa, where South Africa’s apartheid regime fell and a new constitution was announced when Nelson Mandela was freed in 1990. Governments in Ethiopia and South Yemen also collapsed.
Developments worldwide contributed to the spread of liberal democracy after the fall of right-wing and dictatorial regimes following the collapse of communism. Even Russia and the former Soviet republics turned away from socialism and moved towards democracy.
Totalitarian as well as socialist ideas had prevailed throughout the twentieth century, particularly in Third World countries and the Arab states, through the emergence of socialist, nationalist and Muslim parties. The supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria even wrote a famous book, titled The Socialism of Islam.
The dominance of ideologies over politics made some writers, such as Jean-Francois Ravel, say in 1983 in a tribute to democracy, that “it is only a transitional phase in the history of mankind that would soon disappear.”
Meanwhile, Fukuyama declared the opposite opinion as he announced the ultimate victory of liberalism.
There is a strong association between liberalism and democracy, and the word is derived from the Latin word for “free.” But liberalism is based on a special concept of freedom, whose features became evident in the seventh century.
“Liberal thought” as Al Beblawi explained, is “not only an invitation to freedom, but it is primarily a call to individuality and respect for the private framework in which the individual enjoys independence and freedom without interference or disturbance.
“Upon that, we find that liberal thought, even if it is based on democracy, is not considered a sufficient guarantee, but must be accompanied by recognition of the rights of individuals in a manner that these rights will not be compromised or abused.
“Therefore, democracy that is consistent with liberal thought is a constitutional democracy, namely, it sets limits to protect individuals, their wealth, and freedoms.”
If liberalism sanctifies individuality to this extent, so, what is its stand on “community goals” or its “vision”? Al Beblawi said: “Liberal thought rejects inherited ideas and sees that the community’s goals are inevitable, metaphysical or non-metaphysical; and that the individual is harnessed to achieve these goals.
“On the contrary, liberal thought believes that the individual is the first step, the basis of communities, and that he or she seeks to pursue goals and objectives that are always special and variable.”
Here, it is clear that there is a contradiction with “collective doctrines,” which call for “communities that have goals.”
Who were the prominent philosophers in the history of liberalism? Englishman Thomas Hobbes was one of the first philosophers to delineate the basis of individuality. The purpose of a community, in his view, and the basis of its existence is protecting the rights of individuals from abuse or what is called the war of all against all.
However, John Locke, another English philosopher, is considered the real ‘father of classical liberalism’, for his defence of constitutional monarchy. The idea of rights of individuals, which are derived from the natural laws that preceded man-made laws, was evident to him.
Since these laws are natural, they apply to everybody and oblige legislators to abide by constitutional limitations; hence there is no room for abusing the freedoms of individuals and their fundamental rights, even in the name of the “majority.”
This is a very important point in relation to the political weight of the majority in democracy. This majority cannot create laws that affect the freedoms of individuals or their basic rights, for example, under the slogan of “the will of the majority.”
For Locke, the basis of this liberal stand was that the social contract “is not a concession from individual’s sovereignty given to the ruler, as much as it is an agreement between everyone in the framework of the natural law,” which is the idea of constitutional democracy.
Locke’s view of democracy differs from that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who proposed the idea of “public will”, and that all provisions and laws are imposed without any deterrent limitation.
On the basis of Rousseau’s ideas, dictatorship of the majority and revolutionary terrorism can be imposed since “there is no place for the rights of individuals, according to Rousseau,” as Al Beblawi explained.
Hobbes took the middle path between Locke and Rousseau, with a stance that does not demand democracy but defends tyranny. However, when Hobbes began his research on the rights of individuals as the basis of a community, he started valuing individualism. Hence, Hobbes’ stand is closer to modern ideas.
Locke remains the real representative of liberalism, since he combined democracy with the rights of the individual. For him, democracy doesn’t unleash the majority, but constrains it with constitutional restrictions protecting the rights of individuals so that they may participate in government; however, with the same power, democracy puts restrictions on and controls the majority and all authority.
Locke paid attention to the economy and was against monopoly or other forms of domination. For him, freedom required diversity of ownership, whereas private property is one of the features of the freedom of individuals.
“Thus we find that Locke’s two basic principles of liberalism have persisted to the present day. They are, namely, the idea of state law, on one hand, and market economy based on private property on the other hand.”
In addition to Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau, the Enlightenment era, with its British and French thinkers, helped push the idea of liberalism and its evolution and development. Figures like Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Hume contributed to varying degrees to the liberal tradition.
Though Al Beblawi says that “The Scottish school during the Enlightenment era was the base that gives liberalism an integrated shape, especially through the writings of David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill” about freedom, which is considered a pillar of liberal thought.”
The development of liberalism and the maturity of its principles were not the sole concern of those thinkers.
Ronald Stromberg speaks about the history of modern European thought, from 1601 to 1977, and about thinkers like Hume, who in his political writings argued that politics is a science like the other sciences.
However, he decided that political phenomena cannot have laws such as the rules governing sports, and said political laws should be enacted with great caution.
I may agree with Montesquieu on putting aside the social contract theory, as it is necessary for peoples’ lives.
In one of his funniest arguments about negating the importance of the social contract, Hume said that “people can live well without having their government”, and he thought that the American Indians set a good example. (p. 224)
Now, how did Westerners begin applying liberal thought?
The author is a columnist and researcher
