WALEED ALY ON LIBERALISM

10 September 2026

Waleed Aly has written the most recent Quarterly Essay reflecting on the responses of both the right and the left to Liberalism – the politics of John Stuart Mill and the economics of Adam Smith and their followers over the centuries. They are the politics and economics that underpin many aspects of democracies such as ours.  In his view, right-wing populists are opposed to Liberalism because they view the world as being run by progressive elites (from universities, bureaucracies, cultural organisations) who are seen to undermine traditional views of family and working class culture. The left-wing “woke” activists object to Liberalism’s focus on individualism because the individuals in power tend to be cis, white, males who oppress groups that aren’t like them. Although Aly acknowledges that Liberalism has achieved great things from the abolition of slavery to bring millions of people out of poverty, he worries whether it can withstand the extreme forces of left and right because Liberalism “bet that humans could be satisfied with expanded freedom and wealth, even if we had to forgo meaning and purpose in the process.” (100) If Liberalism stops delivering prosperity, what is there to fall back on?

Aly also makes an interesting point about the impact of social media and AI on our sense of community because that could be a balance to the extreme individualism of Liberalism. “Traditional community grew out of families and was built on shared neighbourhoods, geography and local forms of life. It involved people thrown together by fate, people with whom we might have had personality and political differences but with whom we would have to live side by side,” (101) But now we limit our sense of community to those who are exactly like us, those to whom the algorithm connects us,  leaving us less and less open to “the other”.

His view is that AI is a classic example of Liberal economics – we’re developing it because we can; we’re selling it to make profits regardless of the cost to individuals or society; we using it to increase productivity and don’t care about the loss of work and meaning; we don’t have a way of measuring its harm; we don’t want to interfere with people’s freedom to develop it or use it. But Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical on AI challenges us to ask a different set of questions: “Do they truly help individuals and people to become more humane and fraternal, while respecting our common home and future generations?” (82) What tech bro asked themselves that question?

I value individualism because it enables people I know such as women and LGBTQI folk to live without (too much) fear in this world compared to traditional/religious societies that attempted to control and hurt them. However, I have always worried about the extremes of capitalism and wanted constraints – from unions to pensions, nationalised industries to progressive taxation. So I’m a JS Mill Liberal rather than an A Smith Liberal. But I also appreciate the point that Aly is trying to make: that it’s important to hold and apply values and morals to our economic and political world. I just don’t want those values and morals to be defined by old religions.