"He wrote that lies—not the truth—would soon shape politics and ideology would distort science."

At Quadrant, Wolfgang Kasper writes about

Mario Vargas Llosa’s journey from Castro groupie to a steel-eyed critic of both Leftism and populism. Vargas Llosa calls liberty “the daughter and mother of rationalism and critical thought” and the culture of freedom “the most beautiful and mysterious human creation” (all quotes are my free translations of the Spanish original). Now, liberalism is confronted by populism in Europe and America, which attacks the open society and appeals to atavistic herd instincts. Elites demand blind trust, promise to protect the populace and to renew national—tribal—glory. Yet, morality disappears when tribalism erodes democracy and liberty. As Vargas Llosa learned in Cuba and the USSR, this ends in new forms of feudalism, terror, assassinations, gulags and the stagnation of a suppressed populace.

The title of the book under review, “The Call of the Tribe”, relates to a human herd mentality that Karl Popper called “the tribal instinct”. We owe this deeply ingrained sentiment to thousands of generations of Homo erectus and femina sapiens ancestors. Facing nature with awe and dread, they survived by slavishly following an almighty leader who promised protection and salvation. The tribal mentality was not completely replaced by the classical-liberal revolution, which tried to convert us to rationalism and individualism:

"Confronted with innovations, change, progress, people feel a kind of insecurity that makes them want to fall back onto the idea of the tribe: the illusion of a closed community, which in reality never existed. Yet, this mirage gives rise to totalitarianisms and populisms."

The book begins with a meaty chapter, in which Vargas Llosa outlines the essence of classical liberalism, before the bulk of the book relates what he learnt from his seven favourite philosophers. It is an intelligent, exhilarating undergraduate or U3A course about the greats who shaped liberalism, spiced by the author’s own witty observations. Liberalism is not just another ideology with answers to all problems. Though flexible and open, this way of thinking fights for open social, political and economic development. But liberals are not anarchists. Indeed, they want a state that is strong and efficacious, but small and rule-bound, which protects property rights, self-responsibility and the rule of law.

Vargas Llosa’s chapter on Adam Smith, his first hero, summarises all that an educated person ought to know about the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. ...He argued for tax-funded education to give everyone decent starting opportunities in life; he opposed government-sponsored monopolies, prohibitions and privileges, as they only impoverish the poor; he attacked slavery.

...The great Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, object of the next chapter, and Vargas Llosa have much in common: an elegant writing style and a passionate liberal engagement, which both men projected into the public arena through essays, speeches and books. Both failed in attempts at political careers, which brought benefits to their respective nations much later—Ortega’s influence over Spain’s post-Franco renaissance, Vargas Llosa’s imprint on present-day liberal, prospering Peru.

...In the chapter on Friedrich August von Hayek (Vargas Llosa leaves him with the Habsburg nobility predicate, which the post-1918 Austrian Republic had taken away), the pace and passion intensify. Here, Vargas Llosa deals with the master who inspired him more than any other. The Road to Serfdom (1944) made Hayek famous. Oddly, it was prohibited in post-war Germany because the Western Allies were loath to antagonise the USSR! They no doubt had a point, because this is a frontal attack on all forms of collectivism through central planning, whether totalitarian or moderate-democratic.

...For Hayek, civilisation is “freedom, legality, individualism, private property, the free market, human rights, peaceful coexistence … a certain submission to traditions cleansed by lived experience … Social engineering is its enemy.” Vargas Llosa rightly highlights Hayek’s great 1957 essay Why I Am Not a Conservative, in which readers are invited to abandon the binary Left-Right divide in politics in favour of a triangle: collectivist socialists, reactionary-collectivist conservatives and individualistic liberals. If the anchoring point of individual freedom is lost, conservative democrats become prone to foul compromises with collectivism, redistributive welfarism and nationalism.

...the French essayist Jean-François Revel was a socialist and a liberal. He is remarkable for lambasting the Left for subordinating facts to ideology. He attacked communism for preventing the triumph of socialism and criticised Europe’s state-owned media, much of the press and the intelligentsia for bad-mouthing freedom. Before political correctness became popular, he saw that it would abridge the fundamental freedom of speech. And he predicted that the feeble responses of the democracies to terrorists and Russian disinformation in the 1980s would invite more terrorism and then a rise of anti-democratic populism. He wrote that lies—not the truth—would soon shape politics and ideology would distort science.

...Vargas Llosa equips the reader—sometimes by explicit observations, sometimes implicitly—to think clearly about the ills of our day: nationalism, protectionism, identity politics, PC intolerance, social fragmentation, partisan polarisation, post-truth spin, anti-system NGO activism, asphyxiating statism, excessive visible-hand redistribution, obfuscatory economic modelling, macroeconomic irresponsibility, fraudulent business practices and lax rule enforcement by lethargic authorities. As long as clear-eyed thinkers like Vargas Llosa uphold the torch of rational individualism, liberty is not yet quite lost. ¡Gracias maestro!

Read more here.