In “Critique of Liberal Ideology,” Alain de Benoist uses the term “liberalism” in the broad Europe an sense of the term that applies not just to American liberalism but even more so to American libertarianism and mainstream conservatism, insofar as all three share a common history and common premises .—Transl.

Not being the work of a single man, liberalism was never presented in the form of a unified doctrine. Various liberal authors have, at times, interpreted it in divergent, if not contradictory, ways. Still, they share enough common points to classify them all as liberals. These common points also make it possible to define liberalism as a specific school of thought. On the one hand, liberalism is an economic doctrine that tends to make the model of the self- regulating market the paradigm of all social reality: what is called political liberalism is simply one way of applying the principles deduced from these economic doctrines to political life. This tends to limit the role of politics as much as possible. (In this sense, one can say that “liberal politics” is a contradiction in terms.) On the other hand, liberalism is a doctrine based on an individualistic anthropology, i.e., it rests on a conception of man as a being who is not fundamentally social.

These two characteristic features, each of which has descriptive and normative aspects (the individual and the market are both described as facts and are held up as models), are directly opposed to collective identities. A collective identity cannot be analyzed in a reductionistic way, as if it were the simple sum of the characteristics possessed by the individuals of a given community. Such an identity requires the collectivity’s members be clearly conscious that their membership encompasses or exceeds their individual being, i.e., that their common identity is a product of this composition. However, insofar as it is based on individualism, liberalism tends to sever all social connections that go beyond the individual. As for the market’s optimal operation, it requires that nothing obstruct the free circulation of men and goods, i.e., borders must be treated as unreal, which tends to dissolve common structures and values. Of course this does not mean that liberals can never defend collective identities. But they do so only in contradiction to their principles.