Liberalism - How Far Has it Strayed From Original Concept?

[Chris Alger]

You are confusing terms with different historical trajectories. Classic liberalism was the Enlightenment's response to feudalism, monarchy, the guilds and other medieval institutions. It's contribution was the emphasis on individualism and private property. The term has evolved into today's "neoliberalism," the economic theory favoring private sector ownership of the means of production, free markets and limited but crucial state intervention in the economy. Neoliberalism is the ideology underpinning all Western-style economies and, in a harsher version, their preferences in lesser developed countries. None of this has anything to do with the debate between US "liberals" and "conservatives," or the Democrats and Republicans. Virtually everyone with authority in the US embraces neoliberal economics, despite disagreements over how to deal with the side effects. Nor does this have anything to do with the tendency of the media to portray business-oriented moderates like Moynihan, Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council as "neoliberals."

US political liberalism emerged in the late 19th century as a reaction to the industrial revolution, when the word was basically a synonym for "reformism." It became prominent about the time of the first Wilson administration. (The New Republic, which most people still regard as the weekly journal of the liberal intelligentsia, was founded around this time). This is the "liberalism" that most people associate with faith in progress, progressive taxation, state intervention in the economy, a stronger federal government vis-a-vis the states, egalitarianism, environmentalism, internationalist (some would say interventionist) foreign policy and, later, a greater emphasis on individual social and political rights. This is the tradition of Al Smith, both Roosevelts, LBJ and Humphrey. Opponents of liberalism, distinct minority which began to call itself "conservative" sometime in the late 1950's, were a polyglot of small businessmen, laissez-faire monetarists, segregationists, anticommunist zealots, anti-Vatican II Catholics, bible thumpers and so forth.

All of this changed after Vietnam and Civil Rights. Vietnam fractured the liberal foreign policy consensus, creating a minority antiwar faction on the left wing that has remained firmly rebuffed by the leaders of both parties. The Civil Rights movement institutionalized the notion of federal intervention to guarantee social entitlements, a prospect that began to scare elites in both parties by the middle 1970's.

The upshot was that the "Democratic Left" has become a marginal force in US politics while the centrists of both parties are virtually indistinguishable, apart from the occasional partisan bickering. Both parties effectively amount to one party wedded to civil rights, social security, "big government," moderate environmentalism, massive intervention in the economy, foreign intervention (especially when it comes to Israel), a huge military and federal support for public education. Both parties, however, strongly emphasize the need to limit or even curtail the federal government's willingness and ability to satisfy popular demands unless they are extremely well organized and financed. In those few cases, the parties fall over themselves to respond.

The basic difference between the parties is (1) the different interest groups and issues each has locked up, which tend to checkmate each other; and (2) their attitude over the amount of compromise elites must endure in order to retain their privilege. The Democrats no longer look forward to any "Great Society" of full employment and living wages for all; Republicans no longer talk about the "welfare state," "state's rights" or the social horrors (extreme poverty, sexism, racism, homophobia) that they defended as recently as 20-30 years ago.

"Conservatism" is more a mish-mash of reactionary propaganda than a coherent ideology, but I'll stop.

[KJS]

You wrote:

"It's so sad that Liberalism has been perverted into promoting a bigger, more pervasive, more intrusive, more concentrated central government authority at the expense of personal freedom and diffusion of government powers."

Witness the USAPATRIOT ACT and its successor, both forwarded by the current non-liberal administration. Few who've read the acts could say these are not the most far-reaching intrusions into the sphere of personal freedom and association put forward in decades, maybe ever. They give more police and surveillance power to the federal government than any other single bills in the history of our republic. Those say that conservatives who push these measures are in favor of less government and more personal freedom are merely regurgitating long-held misleading beliefs about what it means to "liberal" or "conservatives".

KJS

[nicky g]

"To answer nicky regarding why I prefer capitalism over socialism, I believe that socialism promotes a too powerful central government. "

As several people have pointed out, liberalism is not really a political doctrine - it seems to be used as a blanket term for non-rightwingers. That's a mixed bag of social democrats, socialists, liberal conservatives, anarchists, communists, moderate freemarketeers, etc.

My own beliefs are possibly best described as libertarian socialist. I believe that the government should stay out of people's private lives, and only intervene in such affairs to prevent one person doing harm to another. However in the economic sphere, I believe they should intervene to ensure wealth is reasonably evenly distributed and that people do not fall below a certain economic level. I also believe that the governemnt can best provide essential basic services which would otherwise only be available from monopolies, cartels, or artifically constructed markets, and which people should not have to go without if they can't afford them - eg public transport, water and sanitation, etc. Basically I favour a more libertarian verson of Scandinavian social democracy.

[adios]

I realize that it may not display correctly on all computers so here's the text:

LIBERALISM

The word Liberal did not come into use until early in the nineteenth century and it was not until around 1839 that the Whig Party in Great Britain came to be referred to as “the Liberal Party.” But liberalism as a political philosophy finds classic expression in the writings of Hugo Grotius and John Locke and it was a modified version of this philosophy which was adopted as the program of the English Liberal Party. Liberalism defies succinct definition and rather than attempting to express its tenets within the framework of a brief formula we shall rather seek to identify it by enumerating the attributes which distinguish it…Liberalism is characterized by the following beliefs:
1) A belief in the absolute value of human personality and the spiritual equality of all individuals.
2) A belief in the autonomy of individual will.
3) A belief in the essential rationality and goodness of man.
4) A belief in the existence of certain inalienable rights peculiar to individuals by virtue of their humanity. They are commonly spoken of as the natural rights to “life, liberty, and property.”
5) A belief that the state comes into existence by mutual consent for the sole purpose of preserving and protecting these rights.
6) A belief that the relationship between the state and individuals is a contractual one and that when the terms of the contract are violated individuals have not only the right but the responsibility to revolt and establish a new government.
7) A belief that social control is best secured by law rather than command. The law is conceived as being at once the product of individual will and the embodiment of reason. The law alone can command and restrain the individual and “government under the law” is the liberal ideal.
8) A belief that “the government that governs least governs best.” The government is conceived as having primarily negative functions, the protection of the individual in his rights and freedom in order that he may be free to follow “dictates of conscience,” and the laws of nature.



9) A belief in individual freedom in all spheres of life (political, economic, social, intellectual and religious). Freedom is conceived as freedom from all authority that is capable of acting capriciously or arbitrarily, freedom to act in accordance with the dictates of “right reason.”i.e., with the dictates of natural law as it is revealed to men through natural reason.
10) A belief in the existence of a transcendental order of truth which is accessible to man’s natural reason and capable of evoking a moral response. It is an order requiring both individual thought and will for its realization, i.e., it is a potential ordre requiring individual thought and will for its translation into actuality. Through his autonomous reason and in the light of his conscience the individual avoids anarchy by translating the principles of this natural order into practice. The choice between order and anarchy revolves upon the individual and more partciularly, upon individual conscience. Thus conscience is the keystone of the liberal doctrine.

Not all of these beliefs are peculiar to liberalism and many of them have a long heritage in the history of Western civilization. The beliefs, for example, in the absolute moral worth of the individual, in the spiritual equality of individuals, and in the essential rationality of a man are a hertitage from the Middle Ages and have their roots deep in Christian and Greek thought. The ideal of individual freedom under the impersonal rule of law is not a peculiarly modern or liberal ideal. It has a long heritage in Western political thought extending at least as far back as the Stoics in ancient Greece if not even further into the past.


[John Hallowell, Main Currents in Modern Political Thought, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston

[John Cole]

Chris,

A very tidy and lucid explanation. Thanks. I would go a bit further, though, and claim that the conservative ideology mistakes, and causes others to mistake, democracy for free market capitalism, and other institutions--schools, the church, the press--aid in the mystification.

Perhaps I'm not going much further.

John