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Home , Philosophical Radicals, Social liberalism

Evolution of Core Beliefs on Classical

Tradition of liberal thought that had existed in Western philosophy since the Ancient Greek period began to collapse at the time of the English Civil War. Disputes between the Parliament and King Charles I over political supremacy sparked a massive civil war in the 1640s, which culminated in Charles' execution and the establishment of a Republic. In particular, the Levellers, a radical political movement of the period, advocated , an extended voting suffrage, religious tolerance and . The impact of these ideas steadily increased during the 17th century in England, culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which enshrined parliamentary sovereignty and the right of revolution, and led to the establishment of the first , liberal state. Significant legislative milestones in this period included the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679. The Bill of formally established the supremacy of the law and of parliament over the monarch and laid down basic rights for all Englishmen. The Bill made royal interference with the law and with elections to parliament illegal, made the agreement of parliament necessary for the implementation of any new and outlawed the maintenance of a standing army during peacetime without parliament's consent. "Cruel and unusual punishments" were made illegal under all circumstances. This was followed a year later with the Act of Toleration, which drew its ideological content from 's four letters advocating religious toleration. Liberalism, the belief in , equality, democracy and human rights, historically associated with thinkers such as John Locke and evolved as a political movement in the 17th century, though the use of the word "liberalism" to refer to a specific political doctrine did not emerge until the 19th century. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England laid the foundations for the development of the modern liberal state and constitutional monarchy by curbing the powers of the Stuart kings, affirming parliamentary supremacy, passing the Bill of Rights and establishing the principle of "". Locke insisted that lawful did not have a supernatural basis was a sharp break from previous theories of governance. Locke also defined the concept of the separation of church and state. Based on the principle, Locke argued that there was a natural right to the of conscience, which must remain protected from any government control. He also formulated a general defence for religious toleration in his Letters Concerning Toleration. Locke was influenced by the liberal ideas of , who advocated in his Areopagitica, for the importance of – the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all .

Algernon Sidney or Sydney (15 January 1623 – 7 December 1683), an English politician and member of the middle part of the Long Parliament, a republican political theorist, colonel, and commissioner of the trial of King Charles I of England, opposed the king's execution. was second only to John Locke in his influence on liberal political thought in eighteenth-century Britain and Colonial America, and was widely read and quoted by the Whig opposition during the Glorious Revolution. Sidney's argument that "free men always have the right to resist tyrannical government" widely inspired the Patriots at the time of American Revolutionary War and considered Sidney to have introduced a consistent view on liberty. Sidney believed that absolute monarchy was a great political evil and his major work, ‘Discourses Concerning Government’, was written as a response to Robert Filmer's ‘Patriarcha’, a defence of divine right monarchy. Sidney firmly rejected the Filmer's reactionary principles and argued that the subjects of the monarch were entitled by right to share in the government through advice and counsel. The 1776 Declaration of Independence of the United States laid stress on liberal principles and advocated republican form of government without the encumbrance of hereditary aristocracy. The declaration that "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, like rights to lives, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" echoing John Locke's phrase "life, liberty, and property" could be taken as the beginning of the phase of liberalism, long before 19th century.

In 1789 the French Revolution overthrew the hereditary aristocracy, with the slogan "liberty, equality, fraternity" and was the first state in history to grant universal male suffrage. ‘The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’ was first codified in 1789 in France, which laid the foundational document of both liberalism and human rights.

The development of liberalism continued throughout the 18th century with the advent of Enlightenment ideals of the era, which questioned old traditions. The Enlightenment was a late 17th- and 18th-century intellectual movement which emphasized reason, , skepticism, deism1 and science. Enlightenment questioned old traditions about societies and of the Ancient Regime, the belief in absolute monarchy and established religion, especially in Europe, Latin America and North America. The American Enlightenment is a period of intellectual ferment in the thirteen American colonies in the period 1714– 1818, which led to the and the creation of the American Republic. American Enlightenment applied scientific reasoning to politics, science and religion, promoted religious tolerance, and restored literature, the arts, and music as important disciplines and professions worthy of study in colleges. Ideas

1 the belief that God exists, but does not interact supernaturally with the universe of American Enlightenment thinkers highlighted deism, liberalism, republicanism, , toleration and scientific and these ideas were shared by European Enlightenment thinkers. Most of the philosophers of the French Enlightenment were progressive in the liberal sense and advocated the reform of the French system of government along more constitutional and liberal lines. Montesquieu wrote a series of highly influential works in the early 18th century, including Persian letters (1717) and The Spirit of the Laws (1748). Montesquieu pleaded in favor of a constitutional system of government, the preservation of and the law and the idea that political institutions ought to reflect the social and geographical aspects of each community. In particular, he argued that political liberty required the separation of the powers of government. Building on John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, he advocated that the executive, legislative and judicial functions of government should be assigned to different bodies, so that attempts by one branch of government to infringe on political liberty might be restrained by the other branches. In a lengthy discussion of the English political system, which he greatly admired, he tried to show how this might be achieved and liberty secured, even in a monarchy. He also emphasized the importance of a robust due process in law, including the right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocence and proportionality in the severity of punishment. also fought for civil rights—the right to a fair trial and and denounced the hypocrisies and injustices of the Ancient Regime.

The Declaration of Independence in America, echoed Locke. In the context of the times, the Constitution was a republican and liberal document, the oldest liberal governing document in effect worldwide. The American adoption of a democratic theory in its document of the ‘Declaration of Independence’, stating that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, had its impact on the French Revolution and later movements in Europe. American republicanism played a crucial role in the development of European liberalism. The French Revolution is often seen as marking the "dawn of the modern era", and its convictions are widely associated with "the triumph of liberalism. French Revolution became a tradition and republicanism became an enduring option. The passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August, 1789 resembled with the American Declaration of Independence.

The radical liberal movement began in the 1790s in England and concentrated on parliamentary and electoral reform, emphasizing natural rights and popular sovereignty.

Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (1791), ’s early feminist tract, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman91792) provoked responses from radical liberal thinkers. Radicals encouraged mass support for democratic reform along with rejection of the monarchy, aristocracy and all forms of privilege, aiming to widen the franchise to represent commercial and industrial interests and towns. The theoretical basis for electoral reform was provided by who followed the utilitarian philosophy of and strongly supported parliamentary reform, though they were generally found hostile to the arguments and tactics of the Popular Radicals. 1823, Jeremy Bentham co-founded with as a journal for Philosophical Radicals, setting out the utilitarian philosophy, advocating a more consensual form of reform politics that was to dominate in Britain for the next two centuries. British Prime Ministers was the towering political figure of liberalism in the 19th century, under whose leadership the reformed , disestablished the Church of Ireland and introduced the secret ballot for local and parliamentary elections. The developed before and after the French Revolution in Britain got maturity in its thinking and the core concepts, namely , , laissez-faire government with minimal intervention and taxation, a balanced budget, individualism, liberty and equal rights etc. started gaining ground in Europe and America.

William Henry of Orange in the Glorious Revolution, Thomas Jefferson in the American Revolution and Lafayette in the French Revolution were the names associated with the attempts to justify the armed overthrow of tyrannical rules in their nations and to lay foundation for liberal philosophy. Liberalism became popular especially after the French Revolution. In the 19th century, liberal governments were established in nations across Europe, South America and North America, with dominant ideological support from the liberal quarters. In this period, the dominant ideological opponent of classical liberalism was conservatism, but liberalism later had to face major ideological challenges from fascism and communism, though liberalism won over the game due to its propagation for individual freedom. Theories and thoughts of , and others, which broadly emphasized the importance of free markets and laissez-faire governance, with a minimum of interference in trade and individual liberty helped liberal governments to combat these challenges.

The primary intellectual influences on 19th century liberal trends were those of Adam Smith and the classical economists as well as those of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Smith in his The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, addressed the motivation for economic activity, the causes of prices and the as well as the policies of the state to maximise wealth. Smith's economics was carried into practice in the 19th century with the lowering of tariffs in the 1820s, the repeal of the Poor Relief Act that had restricted the mobility of labour in 1834 and the end of the rule of the East India Company over India in 1858.

In addition to Adam Smith's legacy, Say's law, Malthus theories of population and Ricardo's iron law of wages became central doctrines of classical liberal economics. Jean Baptiste Say challenged Smith's labour theory of value, believing that prices were determined by utility and also emphasised the critical role of the entrepreneur in the economy. However, neither of those observations became accepted by British economists at the time. Thomas Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, becoming a major influence on classical liberalism.

Utilitarianism provided the political justification for the implementation of by British government since 1830s; it was mainly used as a justification for laissez-faire. The central concept of which was developed by Jeremy Bentham was that public policy should seek to provide "the greatest happiness of the greatest number". While this could be interpreted as a justification for state to reduce , it was used by classical liberals to justify inaction by the government with the argument that the net benefit to all individuals would be higher, if individual is allowed to act freely without or minimum state intervention. Later on, however, utilitarianism prompted legislative and administrative reform and Mill's later writings on the subject foreshadowed the state.

By the end of the 19th century, the principles of classical liberalism were being increasingly challenged due to slow rate of , a growing perception of the evils of poverty, unemployment and relative deprivation present within modern industrial cities and the agitation of organized labour. A major political reaction against the changes introduced by and laissez- faire came from conservatives concerned about social balance, although later became a more important force for change and reform. Some Victorian writers—including , and —became early influential critics of social injustice. The New Liberalism or movement emerged about 1900 in Britain.

John Stuart Mill contributed enormously to liberal thought by combining elements of classical liberalism with the fresh version of liberalism. Mill's 1859 On Liberty supported the necessity to limit the power that can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. He argued that free discourse would be a necessary condition for intellectual and social progress. Mill defined social liberty as protection from "the tyranny of political rulers" through obtaining recognition of political liberties or rights and by the establishment of a system of constitutional checks. He argued against tyranny of the majority also. Mill was also an early proponent of feminism. In his article "The Subjection of Women" (1861, published 1869), Mill attempted to prove that the legal subjugation of women was wrong and that it should give way to perfect equality. Although Mill's initial economic philosophy supported free markets and argued that progressive taxation penalised those who worked harder, he later altered his views toward a more socialist bent, adding chapters to his Principles of Political Economy in defence of a socialist outlook and defending some socialist causes, including the radical proposal that the whole wage system be abolished in favour of a co- operative wage system.

Liberal philosopher Thomas Hill Green began to espouse a more interventionist government approach. Green's definition of liberty was that the individual ought to be free to do as he wishes unless he harms others.Thomas Hill Green argued that the state should foster and protect the social, political and economic environments in which individuals will have the best chance of acting according to their consciences. The state should intervene only where there is a clear, proven and strong tendency of a liberty to enslave the individual. Green regarded the national state as legitimate only to the extent that it upholds a system of rights and obligations that is most likely to foster individual self-realisation.

In the late 19th century, classical liberalism developed into neo-classical liberalism, which argued for government to be as small as to allow the exercise of individual freedom. In its most extreme form, neo-classical liberalism advocated social Darwinism. Right- is a modern form of neo- classical liberalism.

During 19th and early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire and Middle East, liberalism inspired the rise of the ideas of , constitutionalism and nationalism. These changes, along with other factors, helped to create a sense of crisis within Islam leading to the rise of Islamic revivalism. During the 20th century, liberal ideas spread even further as liberal democracies, which flourished further following the world wars. In Europe and North America, the establishment of social liberalism (often called simply "liberalism" in the United States) became a key component in the expansion of the .

Both modern American conservatism and social liberalism deviated from Classical Liberalism in the early 20th century. At that time conservatives adopted the Classic Liberal beliefs in protecting economic civil liberties. Conversely social liberals adopted the Classical Liberal belief in defending social civil liberties. Conservatism shared an ideological agreement on in the area of preventing government restriction against economic civil liberties, except in rare cases where society's general welfare is at stake. Liberalism continues to wield power and influence throughout the world, but it still has challenges to overcome in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Later waves of modern liberal thought and struggle were strongly influenced by the need to expand civil rights and advocacy for , marriage equality and racial equality and a global social movement for civil rights in the 20th century achieved momentum towards attaining the goals of establishing liberal governments throughout the globe.

Study material for 2nd Semester Compiled by Dr. Soma Ghosh Principal Hiralal Mazumdar Memorial College for Women Dakshineswar Kolkata -700035