The light has failed

How to explain this great mess the world is in? Here are three books, that attempt to explain: The Light That Failed: A Reckoning by Ivan Krastev & Stephen Holmes, Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America by Kurt Andersen and Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century by J. Bradford DeLong. Krastev and Holmes provide a European/American vantage point. Andersen and DeLong offer American views. What question or questions are these authors asking, or not asking?

Krastev and Holmes are political scientists. Anderson is a journalist/writer. DeLong is a professor of economics. The common factor is that these writers are baby boomers - ‘just about’ in the case of Krastev, the youngest, born January 1965 - who are concerned enough, aware enough, and diligent enough to write books like these.

There’s one thing that strikes me immediately. Superficially the question being asked is why the big mess? But the big question these authors really ask is equally interesting: how did I get it so wrong? Appended with: why did we, my generation, get it so wrong? Should we admit this? Why did we get our way? And ultimately, but it seems to me half-heartedly, they each ask: is there any tangible escape?

Unfortunately they don’t answer these questions. There’s something missing. Even so, the age of mea culpa has arrived. The extent of the ‘sorry’ varies. Andersen’s is the clearest:

Krastev & Holmes: “The illusion that the end of the Cold War was the beginning of an Age of Liberalism and Democracy was our illusion too… we were once ready to embrace this illusion.”

Andersen: “Mea culpa…I’d prospered and thrived in the new political economy…I’d effectively ignored the fact that the majority of my fellow Americans weren’t prospering and thriving.”

DeLong: “From this point on this book becomes, in part, an argument I am having with my younger selves and with various voices in my head.”

Each writer has a different approach, a different driver of history and underlying impetus or force at work, behind the driver. Each sees a different demand from populations. Each segments history differently. Each regards the future in a different way. There is some overlap, but let’s look at the differences.

For Krastev and Holmes, post-1989 history is driven by imitation. States formerly under communism wanted to imitate liberalism as the “single orthodox model.” But after a while came revulsion and then anti-liberal backlash. Liberal here is a broad notion of Western liberalism, including the dominant neoliberal strand, and liberal democracy. The ex-communist populations preferred choice on their own terms, including the idea that “things can be different, as well as more familiar and authentic.” And remarkably the same occurred in the West, only this time with Western leaders imitating populist anti-liberal autocrats. The roughly thirty-year period after 1989, the “brief barricade-free” Age of Imitation, has ended definitively with the rise of “no ideological strings attached” mercantilist China. Liberalism is “the light that failed.” The future will be a “return to a world of perpetually jostling political alternatives” including a “chastened liberalism.”

Andersen, focusing on the US, sees nostalgia for the “real and imaginary good old days” as the main driver of history from 1970, with this highly marketable nostalgia picked up by the evil geniuses: “the masterminds of the economic right.” Voters and consumers were “hoodwinked.” The 1980s “never ended.” But the key thing to note is that a “stasis” was reached in the 1990s, including “cultural paralysis.” The continuing, now global, politicised nostalgia led ultimately to populism around the world. I feel there is some accuracy in this argument. There is a choice, according to Andersen, as he struggles for a way out. The only good choice is to become like the Danes, he says. Is this likely?

DeLong has economics as the driver of twentieth century history, with some political choice and some luck involved. Economics in turn is driven by technology and globalisation in DeLong’s “long twentieth century” from 1870-2010. Each person wanted tolerable economic growth, the feeling of personal prosperity, and each expected tolerable economic growth in the future, with not much else considered, according to DeLong. And of course, others must be less deserving. Even so, though neoliberalism was clearly a failure by the end of the 1980s, it was not stopped. Why? Because President Reagan got the credit for the end of the Cold War. The grand narrative of the long twentieth century finishes at 2010, mainly because economic growth stalled at a lower level than previously attained, which for many meant a screaming halt or a backwards into-reverse move, in terms of their own income and wealth from around 2006, amid greater economic inequality. Now, the future is simply open. We do not know what’s going to happen. “A new story, which needs a new grand narrative that we do not yet know, has begun.”

What’s missing in all this, missing from these books by baby boomers? Ironically, demographic power is missing. I call this the Willets argument. It comes from David Willets and his excellent book The Pinch. I recommend reading Willets first, before anything else. Here is a rough version. In the 1930s, the worry was population decline. Policies were maintained or adjusted, to boost populations or bring workers in from outside, or do both. As the huge baby boom generation steadily reached working age, the boomers took over politics and, for the most part, culture. And then the boomers to a large extent fell for rightwing economics and would not listen to anything else. Hence Andersen’s stasis to come. Boomers in the West had not needed to compete for jobs to the same extent that their children had to compete: “When it comes to the global labour market they [the young boomers, paradoxically] were part of a small cohort; they were a scarce resource that could get away with charging a higher price for their labour.”

Later, when boomers wanted lots of cheap stuff, which required the suppression of wages, they increased the labour market to include China and India and many other countries, impoverishing their own offspring and wider culture in the process. Why the recent backlash against liberal democracy? Boomers mostly voted for neoliberalism, eschewing democratic oversight, ironically. But not everyone liked the consequences. Hence the rise of populism. Why did the related commoditised, politicised nostalgia appear? The large number of boomers made nostalgia viable and lucrative, as it became an entrenched industry which has crowded out much of youth culture, especially since the mid 1990s. Why does growth-based economics drive events? Because boomers have control over economics and boomers are driving events. It’s a curious thing that the Willets argument is not in The Light That Failed, Evil Geniuses, or Slouching Towards Utopia.

Willets has the deepest insight. Krastev and Holmes, Andersen, and DeLong see an ending and a backlash. Each is full of insight and well worth reading. Andersen feels the most let down, most betrayed, perhaps is the most pessimistic. Krastev and Holmes make me wonder where their qualified optimism comes from; they see “either tragedy or hope.” DeLong’s book is arguably the weakest mea culpa, and DeLong is vague on the downside, the costs of economic growth and neoliberalism. Each reckons there could be an escape route. Will it be chosen?

© Mal Smith 2025