Liberalism Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Liberalism is a political current embracing several historical and present-day ideologies that claim defense of individual liberty as the purpose of government. It typically favors the right to dissent from orthodox tenets or established authorities in political or religious matters. In this respect, it is held in contrast to conservatism. Furthermore, such ideals are viewed as individual or collectively 'personal'.The word "liberal" derives from the Latin "liber" ("free") and liberals of all stripes tend to see themselves as friends of freedom, particularly freedom from the shackles of tradition. The origins of liberalism in the Enlightenment era contrasted this philosophy to feudalism and mercantilism. Later, as more radical philosophies articulated themselves in the course of the French Revolution and through the nineteenth century, liberalism equally defined itself in contrast to socialism and communism, although some adherents of liberalism sympathize with some of the aims and methods of social democracy.
Classification in a consistent manner is made difficult by the tendency of the dominant strain of liberalism in a region to refer to itself simply as "liberalism" and reject that identification for other minority positions. Since the word "liberalism" ranges from being highly complimentary to a term of abuse, the connotations of the word in different languages can be starkly different.
The editors of the Spanish constitution of Cadiz in 1812 were the first to use the word liberal in a political sense. They named themselves the Liberales, to state that they opposed the absolutist power of the Spanish monarchy.
In its original meaning, the term "liberal" refers to a political philosophy, founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, that tries to circumscribe the limits of political power and to define and support individual rights. In the present, a variety of ideologies attempt to claim the mantle of 19th century liberalism, from libertarianism to ''American liberalism to social-liberalism.
Both European liberalism and American liberalism see their tradition as embracing the Enlightenment, the American War of Independence, the more moderate bourgeois elements of the French Revolution, and the European Revolutions of 1848, with philosophical roots going back to the renaissance traditions of empiricism, humanism and realism of Sir Francis Bacon, Erasmus and Niccolò Machiavelli respectively.
The original Enlightenment thinkers, such as John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu, attempted to establish limits on existing political powers by asserting that there were natural rights and fundamental laws of governance that not even kings could overstep without becoming tyrants. This was combined with the idea that commercial freedom would best benefit the whole of the political order, an idea that would later be associated with the advocacy of capitalism, and which was drawn from the works of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The next important piece of the triad of ideas of liberalism, was the idea of popular self-determination. Most liberals support a combination of these ideas, although many would ascribe more importance to one of them than to the other two.
Beginning in the late 19th century, liberalism started to become the governing ideology in various countries, e.g. in the United Kingdom. At the same time, liberalism became a major ideology in virtually all developed countries. As a result of being so widespread, the term "liberalism" began to evolve rapidly, and took on different meanings in different countries. In some countries, liberalism remained in its late 19th century form: limiting government involvement in private transactions of whatever kind, with government being devoted only to protecting against threats from abroad and enforcing capitalist civil order at home, along with maintaining a stable currency, based on a "sound money" policy.
However, with the coming of industrialization, a new wave of liberal thinkers began seeing liberalism as a positive tool for progress, and hence supported government action to promote progress and well-being, as opposed to merely avoiding interference. This change led to a fundamental split in "liberalism" as a broad ideology, with one wing believing that the tenets of liberalism had been set by the late 18th and early 19th century, and another believing that liberalism was an evolving commitment to progress and stressing that government action can be necessary to strengthen individual liberty and self-determination.
These two diverging branches of liberalism are known today as libertarianism and social liberalism, respectively. However, both of them usually claim the name of "liberalism" as their own, and do not recognize the other branch as being liberal at all.
The first conceptions of liberalism arose in the United Kingdom, and the first philosopher identified as "liberal" is John Locke (1632-1704), who defended religious freedom in his important work A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). However, he would not extend his views on religious freedom to Catholics.
Locke developed the idea of "natural rights", which he saw as "life, liberty and property". His "Natural Rights theory" was the distant forerunner of the modern conception of human rights. However, to Locke, property was more important than the right to participate in government and public decision-making: he did not endorse democracy, because he feared that giving power to the people would erode the sanctity of private property. Nevertheless, the idea of natural rights played a key role in providing the ideological justification for the (at least moderately democratizing) American revolution and French revolution.
The Scotsman Adam Smith (1723-1790) broadly advocated the doctrine of "laissez-faire" or "let [it] act" -- minimal government intervention in the functioning of the capitalist economy. Adam Smith developed a theory of motivation that tried to reconcile human self-interestedness with unregulated social order (mainly done in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)). His most famous work, The Wealth of Nations (1776), tried to explain how an unregulated market would naturally regulate itself via aggregated individual decisions.
American thinkers were also heavily influenced by liberal ideas. Both the third and fourth Presidents of the United States, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and James Madison (1751-1836), put the liberal movement's ideas into practice. They furthered the influence of liberal ideology on the American system of government, by advocating a system of checks and balances, federal states' rights and a bicameral legislature.
At the core of classical liberalism was most often the ideal of a night-watchman state, a state limited to the functions of upholding the law and defending the country with an army.
The contractual nature of liberal thought to this point must be stressed. One of the basic ideas of the first wave of thinkers in the liberal tradition was that individuals made agreements and owned property. This may not seem a radical notion now, but at the time, most property laws defined property as belonging to a family or to a particular figure within it, such as the "head of the family". Obligations were based on feudal ties of loyalty and personal fealty, rather than an exchange of particular goods. Gradually, the liberal tradition began to see voluntary consent and voluntary agreement as being the basis for legitimate government and law. This view was further advanced by Rousseau with his notion of a social contract.
Between 1774 and 1848, there were several waves of revolutions, each revolution demanding greater and greater primacy for individual rights. The word "liberalism" itself was invented in this period. The revolutions placed increasing value on the idea that national unity was an important part of political unity, and that a people could not be properly governed by those who were not present. This was a particularly important concept in the revolutions which ended Spanish control over much of her colonial empire in the Americas, and in the assertion of nationalism in Europe, which separated regions from monarchies that had traditionally controlled them. As part of this revolutionary program, the importance of education, a value repeatedly stressed from Erasmus onward, became more and more central to the idea of liberty.
The late 19th century saw the expansion of voting rights, education and economic progress in the form of industrialism. It also saw the expansion of trade, and therefore opportunity, as well as an explosive growth in the spread of culture and literacy. At the same time, it produced vast inequalities of wealth, and vast human misery in the form of famines, child labor, polluted urban centers, and deep poverty for the majority of the population. The conflict between property and dignity came forward. One strain of liberal thought demanded laws against child labor, and requiring minimum standards of work and wages, while the laissez-faire strain argued that such laws were an unjust imposition on property and a hindrance to economic development.
Another important principle of liberalism was the rationality of government and its institutions. The late 19th century saw the rise of standardization and internationalization of such things as time keeping and weights and measures, as well as money systems and international commercial transactions. Liberalism's insistence that the individual, real or corporate, was the important unit of law, made it the only framework within which the increasingly interdependent trade could be governed. Feudal notions of property, in many nations still in force, were gradually stripped away. For example, serfdom was still practiced in Russia well into the 19th century, and commerce restrictions dating from the middle ages existed in German states right up to unification under Prussia in 1871.
John Stuart Mill (J.S. Mill, 1806-1873) was influential in developing modern concepts of liberalism. He opposed collectivist tendencies while still placing emphasis on quality of life for the individual. He also had sympathy for female suffrage and (later in life) for labor co-operatives. His support for utilitarianism grounded liberal ideas in the instrumental and pragmatic, allowing the unification of subjective ideas of liberty gained from the French thinkers in the tradition of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the more rights-based philosophies of John Locke and the British tradition.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, there was a growing body of opinion which asserted the idea that, in order to be free, individuals needed to have access to all of the requirements of fulfillment: in that view, individual liberty requires that society take responsibility for providing a basic level of opportunity, protection and education.
With the beginning of the 20th century, the conflict between dignity and property became even more acute. Industrialization produced vast fortunes, and a great increase in the potential standard of living. It also produced vast misery and poverty, as well as powerful engines of war. While in the late 19th century industrial nations had been able to seize land and materials from less technologically advanced and politically organized nations (during the age of imperialism), by the early 20th century the globe had been already carved up, and, in order to expand, industrial nations would have to turn on each other. World War I soon began.
In 1911, L.T. Hobhouse published Liberalism [1], which, while it summarized the liberalism of the 19th century, also included qualified acceptance of both government intervention in the economy, and the collective right to equality in dealings, what he called "just consent", which included trade unions.
In the mid-20th century, a new philosophy (or rather, a collection of philosophies) arose: totalitarianism. Totalitarian ideas were centered on the principle that absolute centralized control over all aspects of society was necessary in order to achieve prosperity, stability, and many other goals. Most totalitarians also wished to discredit and destroy liberalism in one way or another. In reply, liberalism spent most of the 20th century defining itself as an opposition to various strains of totalitarianism.
With the Great Depression of the 1930s, liberalism as an ideology received a crippling blow. Most rational people felt that the market failures of the late 1920s and early 1930s had discredited the liberal experiment in politics and economics. In Italy and Germany, nationalist governments arose that linked corporate capitalism to the state, rather than to individual liberty, and promoted the idea that conquest and national superiority would give these nations a rightful "place in the sun". The totalitarian states argued that democracy was weak and incapable of decisive action, and that only a strong leader could impose the kind of discipline that was necessary.
The rise of totalitarianism became a lens for liberal thought. The majority of liberals began analyzing their own beliefs and principles to find out where they had gone wrong. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that totalitarianism rose because people in a degraded condition turn towards dictatorships for solutions. From this, it was argued that the state had a duty to protect the economic well being of its citizens. As Isaiah Berlin put it, "Freedom for the wolves means death for the sheep." They also argued that rationality of governance required the government acting as a balancing force in economics, as shown by the recently developed theory of Keynesianism. It became necessary to "save capitalism from itself", and for free nations to accept the burdens of defending democracy and liberty with force if need be.
People like Lujo Brentano, Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, Thomas Hill Green, John Maynard Keynes, Bertil Ohlin and John Dewey theorized why and how a government could intervene in the economy without the country becoming a socialist planned economy. The above mentioned liberals took the name of new liberals, to underline how they endorsed the evolving tradition of personal liberty and dignity, while rejecting the radical capitalist element from the classical liberal school of economic thought, as well as the revolutionary elements from the socialist school.
The origins of the new liberal current can be found in the Liberal Party in Britain, particularly since Lloyd George's People's Budget. This is the "liberal tradition" that John Maynard Keynes claimed to uphold in the 1930s (although he was also influenced by Fabianism). The Oxford Liberal Manifesto of 1947 of the world organization of liberal parties, the Liberal International, also represents this form of liberalism. The influence of Keynesianism on Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal has led liberalism to be identified with the welfare state in the United States and in Canada.
Nevertheless, the post-war period represented the heyday of "new liberalism". Linking modernism and progressivism to the notion that a populace in possession of rights and sufficient economic and educational means would be the best defense against totalitarian threats, the liberalism of this period took the stance that by enlightened use of government power, individual liberties could be maximized, and self-actualization could be reached by the broad use of technology. Liberal writers in this period include economist John Kenneth Galbraith, philosopher John Rawls and sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf. Many liberals in Europe, as well as in North America, participated in the building of the welfare state.
At the same time, a significant dissenting strain of liberalism grew developed - namely the thread which viewed any government involvement in the economy as a betrayal of liberal principles. Calling themselves "classical liberals" and/or "libertarians", this movement was centered around such schools of thought as Austrian Economics.
If individuals have positive rights as members of a community, they therefore have a right to expect that their community will regulate the economy, since rising and falling economic circumstances are not part of what an individual can control. If individuals have a right to participate in a public, then they have a right to expect education and social protections against discrimination as members of that public. And so on. Many liberals have widely different opinions about the precise number and nature of these rights that should be recognized.
After the 1970s, the pendulum had swung away from government action, and towards a return to the use of the free market and laissez-faire principles. In essence, many of the old pre-World War I ideas were making a comeback.
At present, liberalism and its many descendants are the most prominent philosophical schools in the west and in the increasingly large sphere of economies and societies linked to them. The ideas of individual liberties, personal dignity, private property, universal human rights, transparency of government, limitations on state power, popular sovereignty, national self-determination, privacy, enlightened and rational policy, the rule of law, fundamental equality - all radical notions some 250 years ago, and not all completely codified into law until late in the 20th century, are almost universally admitted as the goals of policy in most nations, even if there is a wide gap between statements and reality.
In general, liberals favor constitutional government, representative democracy and the rule of law. Liberals at various times have embraced both constitutional monarchy and republican government. They are generally opposed to any but the milder forms of nationalism, and usually stand in contrast to conservatives by their broader tolerance and in more readily embracing multiculturalism. Furthermore, they generally favor human rights' and civil liberties, especially freedom of speech and freedom of the press (while holding various positions on whether people have an inherent right to the means of economic subsistence). However, the liberal commitment to unrestricted individual liberty is not necessarily absolute: "One cannot shout fire in a crowded theatre." quipped Oliver Wendel Holmes, and liberal parties support restrictions on incitement to violence.
Liberals also typically believe in a free market and free trade, but they differ in the degree of limited government intervention in the economy which they advocate. In general, government responsibility for health, education and alleviating poverty fits into the policies of most liberal parties. But all of them, even American liberals, tend to believe in a far smaller role for the state than would be supported by most social democrats, let alone socialists or communists.
Liberals generally believe in a neutral government, in the sense that it is not for the state to determine how individuals can pursue happiness. This self-determination gives way to an open mind in ethical questions. Most liberal parties support the 'pro choice' movement and advocate the emancipation of women and homosexuals. Equality before the law is crucial in liberal policies, and racism is incompatible with liberalism. All liberal parties are secular, but they differ on the issue of anti-clericalism. Liberal parties in Latin countries tend to be very anti-clerical.
Liberals agree on the idea that society should have very limited interests in the private behavior of its citizens in the areas of private sexual relations, free speech, personal conscience or religious beliefs, as well as political association. Assurance of personal liberties and freedom, particularly in the case of individual expression, is highly important to liberalism. As John Rawls put it, "The state has no right to determine a particular conception of the good life". The left-wing of liberalism, especially in the United States, considers it fundamental that society has a responsibility to guarantee equal opportunity for each of its citizens. In general, liberals do not believe that the government should directly control any industrial production through state owned enterprises, which places them in opposition to social democrats.
Since liberalism is broad, and generally pragmatic in its orientation, there is no hard and fast list of policy prescriptions which can be universally assumed to be "liberal". In some circumstances there will be tax increases, in others tax decreases. In some cases there will be the creation of a quasi-public entity to perform a function, in other cases privatization or the creation of a government program. Sometimes liberalism emphasizes financial aid to poorer citizens (e.g. as unemployment benefits or negative income tax or basic income, guaranteed minimum income or citizen's dividend). Most liberal parties argue that the government should provide some form of health services and basic education. Also, most liberals believe that social security benefits should be financed from taxes, whereas perks must be purchased by private insurances. In order to provide fuller choice for individuals, they may sometimes support vouchers in utilization of government-paid benefits, such as education or senior care.
In the last quarter-century most social democratic parties have gradually gone more and more to the right. This is especially true in the UK, which has led to the odd situation where the Brits' social democratic party, the British Labour Party, is seen by most as being to the right of their liberal party (the Liberal Democrats).
The modern tradition of libertarianism claims the ideological inheritance of "classical liberalism". However, many object to this blending of what they see as two separate, opposing philosophies.
Those who emphasize the distinction between classical liberalism and libertarianism point out that even Adam Smith believed a free market could not satisfy all the demands of a society. Furthermore, some (Haworth, 1994, pp. 27) argue that libertarianism and liberalism are fundamentally incompatible because the checks and balances provided by liberal institutions conflict with Libertarian support of complete economic deregulation.
Libertarians argue that the term "classical liberalism" was actually coined by Friedrich Hayek, who was deeply critical of modern liberalism. Libertarians also support the philosopher Frederic Bastiat - who advocated the absolute free market unreservedly. Several smaller libertarian parties around the world, who identify themselves with the Austrian school of economics, call themselves "liberals" without further qualification. Generally, this happens in countries where no larger "liberal party" exists, and thus there is no one to challenge their claims to liberalism.
This is an Article on Liberalism. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Liberalism Usage of the word liberalism
The word liberalism has several different, but generally related, meanings. Evolution of Liberalism
Classical liberalism
Historically, liberalism sometimes claims to trace its roots back to the humanism of the Renaissance and the Glorious Revolution in Great Britain. However, truly liberal movements first developed during the Enlightenment. These movements opposed absolute monarchy, mercantilism, and various kinds of religious orthodoxy and clericalism. They were also the first to formulate the concepts of individual rights and the rule of law.Revolutionary liberalism
With the coming of romanticism, liberal notions moved from being proposals for reform of existing governments, to demands for changes. The American Revolution and the French Revolution would add "democracy" to the list of values which liberal thought promoted, and based their political sovereignty on "the rights of man". This idea, that the people were sovereign, and capable of making all necessary laws and enforcing them, went beyond the conceptions of the Enlightenment. Instead of merely asserting the rights of individuals within the state, the people were the state, and all of the state's powers were derived from "the just consent of the governed".Dignity and property
The early 19th century also saw the primary ideological conflict within liberalism brought forward. The two key concepts of liberalism are the dignity of the individual and the right to individual liberty, particularly to own and control private property. These two principles found themselves in conflict, when it became obvious that the property rights of some individuals could not be reconciled with the dignity of others. The extreme case of this was chattel slavery, where one person was viewed as another person's property. Generally, in this conflict, the weight of liberal thought tilted towards the importance of human dignity, viewed increasingly by liberals as more fundamental than the claims of property. However, balancing these two fundamental values still explains a series of conflicts within liberal thought.Liberalism against totalitarianism
Liberalism after World War II
In much of the West, expressly liberal parties were caught between "conservative" parties on one hand, and "labor" or social democratic parties on the other hand. For example, the UK Liberal Party became a minor party. The same process occurred in a number of other countries, as the social democratic parties took the leading role in the Left, while pro-business conservative parties took the leading role in the Right.Positive liberalism
The crucial question of liberalism is the question of whether people have positive rights as members of communities - in other words, positive expectations in addition to being protected from wrongs done by others. For most modern liberals, especially in the United States (but also in Europe), the answer is "yes": individuals do have positive rights based on being members of a national, political or local unit, and have a just expectation to benefits accruing to them, and protections being afforded to them. Other, more classical liberals, would answer "no": individuals have no such rights as members of communities.The liberal pendulum
Liberalism today
Political positions
A caveat is in order: as with any other political philosophy, an abstract explanation of liberalism refers to an ideal. In practice, politicians make pragmatic compromises (see centrism), have personal interests, and may pander to voters, so that the ideal is never a perfect description of any one individual's politics. Further, as with any other political philosophy, liberalism in any of its forms is defined somewhat differently by its proponents and its opponents. Those who adhere precisely to a well-defined set of principles are often those who are far removed from contention for power. The policies of liberal parties are always more or less based on the right to self determination of the individual, and the reciprocal responsibility of the state to protect and promote the individual citizens which make it up.Liberalism in different countries
The word liberalism and its cognates have different (albeit related) meanings in various countries. In most countries, capital-"L" Liberal is used to label the members or sympathizers of a Liberal Party, while small-"l" liberal is used to label the adherents of liberalism as an ideology or simply a political stance.Liberalism and related ideologies
As explained in the preceding sections, there are several diverging (and sometimes opposing) strands of liberalism. In addition, there are also a number of ideologies and philosophies that influence liberals and liberal theory, or that share many common points with (a certain version of) liberalism. Social democracy can be considered liberalism's closest "neighbor" on the left, while conservativism is liberalism's closest "neighbor" on the right. Neo-liberalism is a certain type of pro-market economic policy that arguably rose from the liberal tradition. It is often adopted by conservative, christian-democratic and social democratic politicians, not necessarily combining this with a liberal agenda outside politics. Libertarianism, which developed out of classical liberalism, is sometimes considered a branch of liberalism and sometimes a separate ideology in its own right.Neo-liberalism
The swing away from government action in the 1970s led to the rise of the idea described as neo-liberalism, which refers to a program of reducing trade barriers and internal market restrictions as a way towards a more free market capitalist system. It does accept a certain degree of government involvement in the economy, particularly the acceptance of the need for a central bank and a capable national defense, but it seeks to reduce government regulation (and particularly taxes) as much as possible. While neo-liberalism is sometimes described as overlapping with thatcherism, economists as diverse as Joseph Stiglitz and Milton Friedman have been described as "neo-liberal". As said before, this economic agenda is not necessarily combined with a liberal agenda in politics: Neo-liberals often do not subscribe to individual liberty on ethical issues or in sexual mores. An extreme example was the Pinochet regime in Chile, but other examples are Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder.Liberalism vs. social democracy
The fundamental difference between liberalism and social democracy, besides the fact that they have very different origins, lies in their views of what constitutes social justice, and the role of the individual in society. Social democracy tends to be more in favor of an equality of outcomes, and upholds egalitarianism as the source of its moral values.Libertarianism vs. "classical liberalism"
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