In Liberalism and Its Discontents, Francis Fukuyama diagnoses the political and psychological malaise caused by capitalism. His analysis makes one thing clear: liberalism is incapable of addressing the social, economic, and ecological crises it faces. by Samuel McIlhagga Part 4 - Liberalism in Peril Indeed, Liberalism and Its Discontents , much like its Freudian forebear, argues that liberal democracy’s two adversaries, “populist conservatism” and “progressivism,” are not outside threats but outgrowths of the liberal tradition itself. As Fukuyama states in his first chapter, “What is Classical Liberalism” — the threat comes from internal economic and social corruptions within liberalism rather than from outside competing models or inherent material contradictions. On the right, autonomy meant primarily the right to buy and sell freely, without interference from the state. Pushing this notion to extremes, economic liberalism turned into “neoliberalism” a