This essay argues that progressivism, despite its stated aims of emancipation and empowerment, leads to coercion, dependency, and the erosion of personal freedom through its reliance on centralized state control and corporatism. It contrasts progressivism with classical liberalism, primarily as articulated by FA Hayek, which champions individual liberty, limited government, and spontaneous order, rooted in the principles of America’s Founding Fathers and Judeo-Christian ethics.
The argument unfolds by first critiquing progressivism’s expansion of state power, which fosters dependency and undermines autonomy, as warned by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty. It then distinguishes progressivism from socialism, defining the latter as worker-controlled, decentralized production, while portraying progressivism as a technocratic ideology serving corporate interests. The essay further explores classical liberalism’s commitment to liberty, contrasting it with progressivism’s positive liberty, which justifies state intervention and erodes the rule of law.
Finally, it examines issues like free trade, immigration, and nationalism, arguing that a civic nationalism aligned with liberal principles can safeguard freedom against the threats posed by progressive policies and unchecked globalism. I conclude by acknowledging Marxism’s insights into historical materialism and leverage those insight to advocate for a future that preserves liberty through decentralized, worker-driven systems in the aftermath of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
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In The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment, playwright David Mamet, who was on Steve Bannon’s War Room yesterday, argues that liberalism, which he once embraced, has been co-opted by elites who manipulate cultural institutions, language, and media to consolidate power and erode traditional values. Mamet contends that “disenlightenment” fosters a society driven by conformity and sentimentality rather than reason, turning governance into a tool of oppression akin to Circe transforming men into swine.
I ordered Mamet’s book and look forward to reading it. In his discussion with Bannon, Mamet summarizes his critique: the left’s focus on social consciousness as a hollow performance that undermines individual freedom and meritocracy. Against this, he advocated for constitutional conservatism grounded in logic and personal responsibility. His explained that his shift reflects disillusionment with what he sees as the Democratic Party’s betrayal of its principles, exemplified during the Biden years, when bureaucrats wielded unchecked power.
However, I disagree with what Mamet describes as liberalism. What he is describing is progressivism. In modern political discourse, on the left and the right, the terms “liberalism” and “progressivism” are often used interchangeably, particularly in American contexts. Yet they represent distinct, and ultimately incompatible, philosophical traditions. Classical liberalism emphasizes individual liberty, limited government, and the rule of law. Progressivism, in contrast, champions state intervention to- ostensibly ameliorate inequalities, aiming to engineer societal outcomes in accordance with standards of justice—criteria progressives define and establish via control over policymaking and sense-making institutions.
While progressives often portray their policies as forms of emancipation and empowerment—expanding access to resources, reducing inequality, uplifting marginalized groups—the underlying logic of their ideology reveals a trajectory toward coercion, dependency, and the erosion of personal freedom. Progressives expand state control to achieve these ends, and expansion that involves bureaucratic oversight that limits individual autonomy and choice.
By positioning the state as the primary agent of justice and provider of welfare, progressive policies foster dependency, where citizens rely increasingly on government support rather than personal initiative or voluntary associations. Over time, this dynamic erodes the very freedoms progressives claim to protect, as the scope of individual responsibility shrinks and the power of centralized authority grows—an outcome that classical liberals like FA Hayek warn against as a subtle but inevitable path to servitude. Mamet admits to Bannon that his engagement with Hayek was one of the things that changed his mind.
The distinction between liberalism and progressivism is usefully articulated in the works of Hayek, particularly The Road to Serfdom (1945) and The Constitution of Liberty (1960). While Hayek does not refer to progressivism in his writings, when he speaks of socialism he is describing central economic planning, expansion of state control over the economy, and erosion of individual liberty through collectivist policies—the logic of the corporate state progressives advance and defend. Hayek offers a warning: that the well-intentioned interventions of such a state does lead not to liberation but to a form of servitude I have described as neofeudalism.
I do not agree with Hayek’s definition of socialism although I do agree that what he is describing threatens individual freedom because central planning—which progressivism moves from the state to the corporate oligarchy—inevitably concentrates power, suppresses spontaneous market order, and undermines personal autonomy. Hayek warned that even democratic attempts to implement this model would gradually lead to coercion, as the state would need ever more authority to enforce its economic decisions and resolve conflicts among competing interests.
In contrast, I define socialism as worker ownership and control of the means of production. In what we might describe as libertarian or market socialism, the people reject centralized state control and emphasizes decentralized, democratic control by workers. This vision sees socialism not as a technocratic state bureaucracy but as a radical democratization of economic life. In this framework, coercion and dependency are not inherent, but rather are what socialists seek to eliminate by dismantling corporate hierarchies and ending alienation in production.
Progressivism is the opposite of socialism. Progressivism is an ideology of corporatism. Thus, when I refer to progressivism throughout this essay (and across my work) I am not taking about something analogous to socialism as I have described it, but the praxis of technocrats in the service of the corporate state, which is a beast of late capitalism. To be sure, corporatism’s bureaucratic-managerial spirit has parallels to the state socialism of the Soviet Union, but in the latter arrangement social class was largely eliminated and the ruling class was political not economic. As for the state socialism of the Chinese Communist Party, here we see convergence with Western corporatism since China turned to capitalism to modernize its society in the late 1970s.
What do we mean by liberalism? Classical liberalism is rooted in the conviction that liberty is best preserved when government power is limited and individuals are free to pursue their own ends within a framework of general rules. The commitment to liberty among America’s Founding Fathers is the paradigm, evidenced in the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. The Founders believed that liberty is not granted by government, but is an inherent right endowed by a Creator—the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God—and that government exists primarily to protect these rights.
To preserve freedom, the Founders designed a system of limited government, rooted in checks and balances, federalism, and the rule of law. They feared concentrated power and understood that true liberty flourishes when individuals are free to pursue their own goals, provided they do so peacefully within a stable framework of general laws that apply equally to all. This vision gave rise to a republic in which individual enterprise, personal responsibility, and private property were celebrated as essential to human flourishing. And so has America flourished—to the extend that it has pursued the American System established at its founding.
Among the foundations that has made the United States so successful is the Enlightenment and its roots in the Judeo-Christian ethic. Hayek acknowledges the historical role of Judeo-Christian ethics in shaping the moral foundations of Western civilization and the rule of law. But his moral theory is more evolutionary than revelatory. In The Fatal Conceit (1988), Hayek argues that moral traditions evolve through cultural selection and that religion may serve a functional role in maintaining social order. Like many of the Founders, Hayek approached the matter from a secular perspective rather than one of personal religious conviction.
By cultural selection Hayek means that customs, institutions, norms, and values evolve over time through a process analogous to natural selection in biology. Instead of genetic traits being passed on for survival advantages, cultural practices persist and spread when they help societies function more effectively or people adapt better to their environments. Many of our moral traditions—e.g., respect for contract enforcement, family structure, property rights, even religious codes—were not consciously designed, but rather evolved over generations. This was because they contributed to social stability and prosperity. Societies that adopted effective norms were more likely to survive and thrive, and those norms were passed down and imitated. We can judge the relative efficacy of normative systems by comparing them.
This evolutionary conception is a general principle for Hayek. What works in civilization comes from trial and error across generations—not from centralized planning. Cultural selection explains how spontaneous order arises: institutions and traditions that work are retained and those that don’t discarded, even if we don’t fully understand how or why at first. Useful social practices survive and spread not by deliberate design, but because they help societies succeed. It is our role as social scientists to describe and explain the development and success of institutions and traditions—not to elevate our status to that of world planner.
Liberty has proven itself to be central to social progress. In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek describes liberty not as a guarantee of outcomes, but as the absence of coercion by others—especially by the state. This negative conception of liberty—freedom from interference—requires an institutional and legal order that is impartial, non-instructive, and predictable. Such a system facilitates what Hayek calls the “spontaneous order” of society: a self-organizing system in which knowledge is decentralized and individuals, guided by their own purposes, contribute to a dynamic and adaptive social order.
The Founders’ experience with Christianity aligns with Hayek’s evolutionary model through their shared emphasis on moral traditions that foster social order and liberty. The Founders, steeped in Judeo-Christian ethics, viewed liberty as an inherent right endowed by a Creator, as articulated in the Declaration, and designed a system of limited government to protect it. Their Christian-influenced moral framework—emphasizing individual responsibility, property rights, and the rule of law—provided the cultural bedrock for a flourishing republic. While the Founders saw these principles as divinely ordained, Hayek viewed them as products of spontaneous order, selected for their functional benefits over time. Both perspectives converge on the idea that enduring moral traditions, whether seen as God-given or culturally evolved, underpin the institutions—such as constitutional checks and balances or respect for contracts—that sustain a free and prosperous society.
Progressives challenge the sufficiency of Hayek’s model arguing that freedom cannot be truly exercised by those who lack access to material resources or social opportunity. They advocate a positive conception of liberty—freedom through empowerment—often demanding redistributive policies, regulatory oversight, and state-managed welfare programs. Roberto Unger expressed this position in his concept of “super liberalism,” a critique of liberalism that pushes beyond its traditional boundaries, reimagining how individuals can interact in ways that transcend established norms of personal autonomy, rights, and social organization to recover human solidarity.
In Unger’s view, traditional liberalism emphasizes individual rights, personal freedom, and legal structures to protect individuals from interference. However, he argues that liberalism in this conventional form fails to address deeper issues of social inequality, economic disparity, and the limitations imposed by rigid institutional frameworks. This view is inspired by Isiah Berlin’s observation of the distinction between “negative” and “positive” liberty, which was anticipated even earlier by Erich Fromm in his Escape from Freedom (1941). For the record, Hayek doesn’t rule out all social programs for those who need it, rather he warns that central planning is fraught with unintended consequences.
On the surface, progressivism might sound like it’s resonating with Marx’s political project. Both criticize inequality and advocate reforms to improve the lives of ordinary people—at least progressives say this. But they’re very different standpoints. One might say that Marx had something a little more radical in mind. While progressivism has historically worked within the corporatist framework, indeed, it is an animal of capitalism, Marx envisioned a revolutionary restructuring of society—abolishing class divisions and private ownership of the means of production.
From the beginning, American progressivism sought to overthrow capitalism but to harmonize relations between business, labor, and government through expert-driven administration, regulation, and social programs. Rather than empowering the working class to take control of production, progressives aimed to temper capitalism’s excesses in order to ensure its survival—thus extending and entrenching corporate hegemony over the populace. Progressivism is thus a managerial and technocratic project, far removed from Marx’s call for proletarian revolution to end social class. In the progressive mind, the proletariat is organized by the state, with control externalized to corporate governance. For Marx, with the elimination of social class, the state goes away.
Hayek rejected all of this—except concerning the matter of free trade. Let me address this straightaway, since I recently critiqued Marx’s position on the matter (see Marx the Accelerationist: Free Trade and the Radical Case for Protectionism). Both Marx and progressives advocate free trade, albeit for very different reasons. Marx was an accelerationist, seeing in free trade a hastened end to capitalism as national pursued a race to the bottom. This would clear the way for communism—a classless and stateless world system where man would be emancipated from necessary labor (AI will accomplish this without a communist revolution). Progressives see in free trade a global world order where the world’s population would be under the thumb of a world state run by transnational corporations. Thus, for their own projects, both Marx and progressives are critical of protectionism.
Hayek supported free trade for a very different reason. He believed that free trade on the world stage was crucial for preserving individual liberty and limiting the scope of state power. He viewed protectionism not just as economically inefficient, but as a step toward nationalism and centralized economic planning—forces he saw as threats to freedom. By contrast, a global system of free trade encourages competition, innovation, and the efficient allocation of resources based on comparative advantage, which presumes imperialism is not transforming foreign economies. For Hayek, global economic interdependence acted as a constraint on national governments’ ability to manipulate domestic markets for political ends.
Moreover, as a sociological point that I will discuss forthwith, Hayek viewed the world market as a spontaneously ordered system—an emergent outcome of voluntary interactions across borders. Free trade, then, was not merely a technical policy preference; it was a reflection of his deeper conviction that human prosperity depends on respecting the limits of our knowledge and allowing decentralized systems, like global markets, to function without coercive interference. In this sense, free trade was part of his broader vision of an open, liberal international order that safeguards both freedom and peace.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the ethical core of Hayek’s standpoint. In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek argues that economic planning and centralized decision-making, even when motivated by egalitarian aims, are fundamentally incompatible with individual liberty. When government assumes responsibility for securing particular social outcomes, it must necessarily infringe on the private choices of citizens, leading inevitably to a society governed by coercion rather than consent.
A central danger of progressivism thus lies in its implicit faith in centralized authority and technocratic expertise. To implement social reforms, redistribute wealth, and regulate markets, the state must gather information, prioritize among competing interest, and make value judgments—functions that cannot be performed impartially or without political bias. This necessarily undermines the rule of law, as state actions are no longer governed by general principles but by ad hoc decisions tailored to policy goals. The result is an administrative state that exercises discretionary power, often in ways that are opaque, unaccountable, and resistant to public scrutiny. The rule of law becomes the rule of bureaucrats. This is the very definition of bureaucracy: a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials rather than by elected representatives.
Moreover, Hayek argues that the expansion of the welfare state cultivates dependency and weakens the moral fabric of a free society. In The Constitution of Liberty, as suggested earlier, he acknowledges that a minimal social safety net may be compatible with liberty; however, as welfare systems grow more comprehensive and intrusive, they shift the relationship between the individual and the state. Citizens begin to look to government not as the protector of their rights, but as the provider of benefits. The paternalistic relationship fosters a compliant and passive public, eroding the virtues of initiative, personal responsibility, and self-reliance.
Progressivism thus redefines freedom not as the absence of coercion, but as access to goods and services deemed necessary by the technocrats. If one is charitable, he might say that this the unintended consequence of pursing positive liberty. Whatever the motive behind it, the end is destructive to liberty. This new vision of freedom requires constant interference with individual judgment, private property, and voluntary exchange. As more areas of life come under public control— education, employment, healthcare, even speech—the space for private decision-making contracts and freedom diminishes. The apparatus of the state grows not only in size but in moral authority, becoming the arbiter of fairness, inclusion, and even truth.
The paradox is obvious: in the name of freedom, progressivism builds economic and political structures that reduce individuals to clients of the state, dependent on its favor and bound by its mandates. Liberals—real liberals—refuse to sacrifice freedom for illusory gains in equality or security, insisting that liberty is both the means and the end of a good society. A real liberal is what Mamet has become now that he has freed his mind from the progressive tribe. It is therefore disappointing that he has assumed the way the term is used by progressives to cover for the tyranny of progressivism.
The difference between liberalism and progressivism is not merely one of degree or policy preference, but of principle. Liberalism seeks to protect individuals from coercion; progressivism seeks to use coercion for what it deems the common good. What is the common good? What is good for the corporate elite. The social programs exist to control the masses. While progressives claim to empower individuals through redistribution and regulation, Hayek shows that such empowerment is an illusion—one that comes at the cost of liberty, leading to technocratic control and widespread dependency.
Returning the globalization problematic, as I explained in that recent essay I cited above, libertarians today are supportive of immigration which brings them into a strange alliance with Marx, for the same reason, namely wage suppression, albeit not with the same desired outcome. Both understand that driving down wages is what capitalist firms do: slash labor costs to maximize the surplus value in production. As Marx documents in Capital, displacement and impoverishment of labor makes difficult realizing as profit the value contained in commodities in the market, since it is by consumption that the worker completes the circuit—and all the cheap commodities in the world won’t mask the plunge in wages and disappearance of jobs. Libertarians reject Marx’s prediction, so full steam ahead.
Although Hayek favored open borders in principle, as do many libertarians, he acknowledged possible complications. In some of his later comments and writings, he recognized that immigration could raise issues if newcomers do not assimilate into the cultural or institutional framework of liberal society. Hayek was concerned in particular with the preservation of liberal institutions. If immigration brought in large numbers of people with illiberal values or expectations of a welfare state, this could pose a threat to a free society. While Hayek never advocated strong immigration controls as a solution to this problem, he was likely to argue that liberal institutions must be robust and that welfare systems should be designed in ways that don’t incentivize dependency.
Hayek is not alone in this concern. Classical liberals such John Locke (implicitly), and more recently thinkers such as James Buchanan and Milton Friedman have emphasized that liberal institutions require a stable framework of laws, norms, and values. If large-scale immigration introduces populations that do not share or support these norms (e.g., free speech, limited government, and property rights), it could undermine those institutions over time. Borders thus serve as a filter to ensure political assimilation and institutional continuity. Friedman famously argued that a society can’t have both open borders and a welfare state. Immigrants may vote for expanded government benefits or regulatory policies that classical liberals oppose. In other words, immigrants are likely to vote for progressives. From this perspective, some level of border control is seen as a way to prevent the political feedback loop that leads to more statism.
Some classical liberals, particularly those influenced by libertarian property-rights theory (e.g., Hans-Hermann Hoppe), argue that just as individuals have the right to control access to their own property, political communities should have the right to control who enters their territory. This is framed not as a collectivist claim but as an extension of voluntary association and contract. If citizens do not consent to the entry of outsiders, forced integration violates classical liberal principles of individual sovereignty.
Despite the default set on free trade, borders are viewed from this standpoint as necessary to uphold the rule of law, also a core tenet of classical liberalism. Liberty requires certain cultural preconditions: acceptance of pluralism, respect for norms, and rule-following behavior. These traits are not universally distributed, therefore societies must carefully manage immigration to preserve the cultural substrate necessary for freedom. Sudden or unmanaged flows of people overwhelms administrative and legal systems, leading to disorder. Borders ensure that migration is conducted through predictable legal processes, preserving the integrity of the legal order. Classical liberals who support borders do so not out of hostility to outsiders, but from a belief that liberty is fragile and depends on institutional and cultural conditions that can be disrupted by poorly managed migration. They view border controls as a prudential, not moral, safeguard for liberal democracy and limited government.
In light of the fact that progressives have weakened liberal institutions and established an expansive welfare state, Hayek’s view on open borders has to be reassessed. Nationalism, when grounded in civic identity rather than ethnic exclusion, can serve as a crucial force in preserving the cultural and institutional framework that sustains liberal societies. As Hayek recognized, liberal institutions—such as individual rights, limited government, and the rule of law—are not self-perpetuating; they rely on a shared cultural commitment to certain values like respect for pluralism, responsibility, and tolerance.
In a context of open borders, where large-scale immigration might introduce populations with illiberal norms or expectations incompatible with free market democracy, a cohesive national identity can help integrate newcomers into the liberal tradition. Nationalism, in this civic sense, fosters a common language of rights and duties, encouraging assimilation into the political culture rather than fragmentation into parallel societies. It acts as a social glue that maintains the trust and cooperation necessary for liberal institutions to function. Rather than being in tension with liberalism, a principled form of nationalism can provide the cultural continuity and civic loyalty that protect liberal societies from erosion—especially in an era of global movement and ideological divergence.
It might strike readers as a bit schizophrenic to profess liberal and republican principles and values while at the same time working from a historical materialist standpoint. I have said this before, but my view is that Karl Marx’s materialist conception of history should be the paradigm of the social science. Marx is to social history what Darwin is to natural history.
However, in many ways, Marx was a liberal, particularly in his foundational commitments to individual freedom and rational progress—core tenets of the Enlightenment. He saw capitalism as a dynamic and progressive economic force in history, washing away the old order of things and transforming the world. Marx believed in the transformative power of reason and history. And, like many liberals, Marx’s emphasis on individual freedom of thought and skepticism toward traditional authority brought him to a critical view of organized religion.
Marx’s critique of capitalism, while radical, was rooted in liberal ideals: capitalism had failed to deliver on the promises of quality and liberty liberals espoused. Social class was the obstacle. Marx advocated pushing liberalism to its logical conclusion—true freedom requires not just political rights, but collective control over the conditions of life. Marx’s vision of communism was not merely establishing economic equality but freeing individuals from alienation and enabling them to fully realize their human potential. He believed wiping away social class would make that possible.
As I implied above, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the coming of agentic AI will radically change class relations. Either humanity will enter a new Dark Ages where a dwindling population will be managed on high-tech estates controlled by corporate overlords or the people will take possession of the apparatus and use it to generate commodities and services in a new economy without value. Both Locke and Marx agree that labor is the source of value. It follows that all value disappears with the elimination of necessary labor. Ernest Mandel told us about this back in 1967 (see The End of Work and Value). The question of which end we desire depends on whether we wish to preserve liberty or live as serfs.
freedom and reason 