DOCSLIB.ORG

TOWARDS a WELFARE SOCIETY: a Critical Re-Appraisal of L.T.Hobhouse’S New Liberalism and Sociology

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
TOWARDS a WELFARE SOCIETY: a Critical Re-Appraisal of L.T.Hobhouse’S New Liberalism and Sociology TOWARDS A WELFARE SOCIETY: A Critical Re-appraisal of L.T.Hobhouse’s New Liberalism and Sociology Hanno Terao Cardiff School of European Languages, Translation and Politics Cardiff University Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Ph.D. March 2013 DECLARATION This work has not been submitted in substance for any other degree or award at this or any other university or place of learning, nor is being submitted concurrently in candidature for any degree or other award. Signed ………………………………………… (candidate) Date ………………………… STATEMENT 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of …………………………(insert MCh, MD, MPhil, PhD etc, as appropriate) Signed………………………………………… (candidate) Date ………………………… STATEMENT 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. The views expressed are my own. Signed………………………………………… (candidate) Date ………………………… STATEMENT 3 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed………………………………………… (candidate) Date ………………………… STATEMENT 4: PREVIOUSLY APPROVED BAR ON ACCESS I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loans after expiry of a bar on access previously approved by the Academic Standards & Quality Committee. Signed………………………………………… (candidate) Date ………………………… ii ABSTRACT Although L.T. Hobhouse (1864-1929) has long been considered one of the leading political thinkers of the British new liberalism, the whole range of his thought has not been given as much attention as it deserves. Through a thorough analysis of Hobhouse’s academically written works, the thesis demonstrates that he made a considerable contribution to the political thought of the new liberalism through his clear and articulate vision of a liberal welfare society. This vision was built upon a strikingly consistent system of political, economic, sociological, and philosophical arguments. The thesis argues these claims from three perspectives. First, while sharing with other new liberals a focus on the cultivation of individual morality as the primary purpose of social reform, Hobhouse further associated the idea with a notably pluralist perspective, focusing on the activities of intermediate organizations as well as the state. Secondly, his ethics of harmony offered a distinctively new liberal criterion on the development of morality and wealth distribution, whilst showing a notable intellectual affinity with T.H. Green’s theory of rights. In fact, despite his incessant critique of philosophical idealism, Hobhouse’s views were what could properly be called those of an ‘idealist liberal’ in the realms of ethics and political philosophy. Finally, on the basis of the integration of his new liberal ethics, idealist-inclined realist metaphysics and neo-Spencerian evolutionary sociology, Hobhouse labelled the core principle of a liberal welfare society ‘citizenship’ in his sociology, identifying its partial realization in modern society. Welfare society was envisioned as a global community premised on the mutual recognition of moral rights and duties. This vision was later in part succeeded by T.H. Marshall’s sociological theory of citizenship, but its scope and philosophical depth was a specific product of Hobhouse’s systematic thought. In summary the thesis is an attempt to show the originality and comprehensiveness of Hobhouse's welfare thought and thus to restore his reputation as a serious thinker. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Andrew Vincent, who supervised my whole doctoral research with continuous encouragement and countless invaluable suggestions. His unfailing trust in my abilities gave me an enormous amount of confidence and motivation. I was also hugely fortunate to have Professor David Boucher as the other supervisor at Cardiff University. His admirable expertise and helpful feedback improved my work considerably. I would also like to thank Professor Masao Watanabe and Professor Tamotsu Nishizawa at Hitotsubashi University in Japan. They not only encouraged me to study in the UK but also always welcomed me on my temporary returns to Japan with a number of useful comments for my research. I sincerely thank Japan Student Services Organization for providing financial support throughout my entire PhD research, without which I would never have been able to study in the UK. I also deeply appreciate the staff at the Department of Politics, the University of Sheffield, and the School of European Language, Translation and Politics, Cardiff University, for supporting me in many ways including the provisions of the postgraduate funds. Also, I am grateful of the staff at the LSE Library and the British Library at London and the Bodleian Library at Oxford for allowing me to access many precious books, journals and archives. I would also like to mention the moral and material supports given to me from all those researchers, friends and colleagues I met at Sheffield, Cardiff and various conferences and seminars in the UK and Japan. Among them, I would like to express my special gratitude to: Jun Itoh, Mayuko Yoshikawa, Dr. Ko Hiraishi, Dr. Taku Yamamoto, Tomohito Baji, Sora Sato, Dr. Junichi Kasuga, Professor Colin Tyler, Dr. Maria Dimova-Cookson, Professor James Connelly, Chih-Wei Tsai, Masahiro Mogaki, Asa Cusack, Dr. Takahiro Endo, Jia-Hau Liu, Naoko and Matteo Fabbretti, Davide Orsi, iv Chih-Yang Liu, Michihito Ando and Robert Chapeskie. Last but certainly not least, I would like to give thanks to my parents, Toshiko and Itaru, who provided me unconditional support all the time. Most importantly, though, I must thank my wife, Machiko, for her extraordinary love, patience and encouragement. She was (and will be) always the source of my strength and inspiration. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................. vi INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER ..................................................................................... 1 1. Literature Review .......................................................................................................... 2 2. Contributions to Existing Literature .............................................................................. 6 3. Scope, Methodology and Outline .................................................................................. 9 CHAPTER 1 THE NEW LIBERALISM AND EARLY HOBHOUSE ON SOCIAL REFORM ....................................................................................................... 12 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 12 2. New Liberals and Social Reform ................................................................................ 13 3. The Early Hobhouse’s Pluralist Perspective ............................................................... 21 4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 34 CHAPTER 2 BOSANQUET AND THE WEBBS ON SOCIAL REFORM: THE DEVELOPMENT OF ETHICAL WELFARE PLURALISM ........................ 36 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 36 2. Bosanquet’s Philosophy of Charity and Hobson’s Critique ........................................ 37 3. The Fabian Socialism of Beatrice and Sidney Webb .................................................. 48 4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 59 vi CHAPTER 3 HARMONY, RIGHTS AND WELFARE: THE CRUX OF HOBHOUSE’S NEW LIBERAL ETHICS .................................... 62 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 62 2. Bentham and Inner Harmony ...................................................................................... 64 3. J.S. Mill and Social Harmony ...................................................................................... 68 4. Concepts of Rights and Welfare .................................................................................. 72 5. The Critique of T.H. Green’s Theory of Rights .......................................................... 77 6. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 84 CHAPTER 4 PROPERTY, FUNCTION AND JUSTICE: HOBHOUSE’S THEORY OF DISTRIBUTION ....................................................... 86 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 86 2. The Fabian Theory of Rent and The Labour Movement ............................................. 87 3. Property ....................................................................................................................... 92 4. Function ......................................................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Comparative Psychology of Leonard T Hobhouse: Its Context and Conception
    THE COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEONARD T HOBHOUSE: ITS CONTEXT AND CONCEPTION Charles W. Tolman University of Victoria ABSTRACT: Hobhouse viewed comparative psychology as playing a key role in his politically liberal, social-ethical worldview. The main feature of evolving mind was the increased capacity for democratic self-direction. Political reaction, identified with imperialism, attempts ideologically to obscure this fact, and thus to impede social progress. Its instruments are philosophical idealism and pseudo-scientific biologism or Social Darwinism. Comparative psychology, conceived as an essentially human psychology, could counteract this reactionary ideology with genuine scientific knowledge of present human capacity and future potential. These can only be revealed by a correct scientific approach, which, Hobhouse maintained, had to be evolutionary and comparative. ... .1 have long felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the n\arked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. John Stuart MiU, 1873 The doctrine that human progress depends upon the forces which condition all biological evolution has in fact been the primary intellectual cause of the [social-political] reaction. Leonard T. Hobhouse, 1904 Most comparative psychologists know that Leonard T. Hobhouse ( 1 864- 1 929) wrote a book caUed Mind in Evolution ( 1 90 1 / 1 926) in which he described some problem solving techniques for the investigation of learning and "practical intelligence" in animals, techniques which Wolfgang Kdhler borrowed—with proper acknowledgement—and improved upon in his well knov^Ti work on the Mentality of Apes (1917/1925).
    [Show full text]
  • JS Mill's Political Thought
    P1: JZZ 0521860202pre CUFX079B/Urbinati 0 521 86020 2 cupusbw December 26, 2006 7:38 This page intentionally left blank ii P1: JZZ 0521860202pre CUFX079B/Urbinati 0 521 86020 2 cupusbw December 26, 2006 7:38 J. S. MILL’S POLITICAL THOUGHT The year 2006 marked the two hundredth anniversary of John Stuart Mill’s birth. Although his philosophical reputation has varied greatly in the interven- ing years, it is now clear that Mill ranks among the most influential modern political thinkers. Yet despite his enduring influence, and perhaps also because of it, the breadth and complexity of Mill’s political thought is often under- appreciated. Although his writings remain a touchstone for debates over liberty and liberalism, many other important dimensions of his political philosophy have until recently been mostly ignored or neglected. This volume aims, first, to correct such neglect by illustrating the breadth and depth of Mill’s political writings. It does so by drawing togetheracollection of essays whose authors explore underappreciated elements of Mill’s political philosophy, including his democratic theory, his writings on international relations and military inter- ventions, and his treatments of socialism and despotism. Second, the volume shows how Mill’s thinking remains pertinent to our own political life in three broad areas – democratic institutions and culture, liberalism, and international politics – and offers a critical reassessment of Mill’s political philosophy in light of recent political developments and transformations. Nadia Urbinati
    [Show full text]
  • Session I Abraham Kuyper and Reformed Social Teaching
    Session I Abraham Kuyper and Reformed Peter S. Heslam James D. Bratt Social Teaching James C. Kennedy Journal of Markets & Morality Volume 5, Number 1 (Spring 2002), 11–33 Copyright © 2002 Prophet of a Third Way: The Shape of Kuyper’s Socio- Peter S. Heslam The London Institute for Political Vision Contemporary Christianity A century after Abraham Kuyper’s visit to the United States, the issue that dominated political discourse both in Northern Europe and in the United States was that of the so-called Third Way. This was reflected in a meeting that took place in Washington in the autumn of 1998 between Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, the serving governmental heads of the United Kingdom and the United States. It was a time of seemingly intractable crisis at the White House in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky affair, but the theme that pervaded the agenda of that meeting was that of a Third Way in politics, and it served to cement the Blair-Clinton relationship with bonds of solidarity. It even diverted the focus of media coverage of the United States president, which hitherto had been fixed on the unfolding scandal. Much debate ensured in the broadsheets as to what was meant by the term; was it a radical alternative to two opposing ideologies, one that bore no similarity to what it sought to replace? Or was it an amalgam of the best parts of each of them? Although Kuyper did not use the term, his sociopolitical vision was designed as a Third Way—an alterna- tive to the ideologies of individualism, on the one hand, and collectivism, on the other.
    [Show full text]
  • Public Space and the Limits of Liberalism
    Public Space and the Limits of Liberalism by Mary King A Thesis presented to The University of Guelph In partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master’s of Arts in Philosophy Guelph, Ontario, Canada © Mary King, September, 2020 ABSTRACT PUBLIC SPACE AND THE LIMITS OF LIBERALISM Mary King Advisor(s): University of Guelph, 2020 Karyn Freedman Omid Payrow Shabani If we desire the preservation of public spaces, then liberalism is not a suitable framework to this end. The discursive nature of liberalism combined with the political liberalist value of neutrality renders disagreements about public space inert. This is connected to a desire to reduce interference that I argue is at the heart of increased privatization of public spaces. Liberalism abstracts too far from land, making it inappropriate for navigating issues that are about the physicality of public space itself. Liberalism hierarchizes uses of public space, facilitated through liberal conceptions of land as property. I suggest three alternative theories that could better frame public space: 1) solidarism, 2) an ethical- ecological approach, and finally, 3) an Indigenous approach that centers the project of decolonization. These frameworks do not imply liberal property ownership, and they hold potential for public space – and therefore land – being a more integrated part of our communities. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the support of many, many people. I have immense gratitude for both my advisor, Prof. Karyn Freedman, and my second reader, Prof. Omid Payrow Shabani. Thank you, Karyn, for your excellent support, your careful reading, and for pushing me for more clarity: it has helped make me a better writer.
    [Show full text]
  • ENVISIONING SOCIOLOGY Isolation from Theoretical Reflection and Providing an Independent Source for a Disciplinary Sociology
    ONE VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN SOCIOLOGY The nineteenth century was a period of massive intellectual change. In both the United States and Europe there was a renewed awareness of the centrality of the “social” and the “cultural” in explanations of individual human behavior. New approaches emerged with a shared concern for estab‑ lishing rigorous “scientific” methods in the study of social phenomena. Their proponents forged the new university disciplines of economics, geography, anthropology, psychology, and sociology, and they became involved in build‑ ing a professional infrastructure of journals and associations to sustain this intellectual work. They inspired scientifically informed practices of social change through planning and social reconstruction. It is for these reasons that the last third of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century have been characterized as the “classical” period of the social sciences. Patrick Geddes and his circle were among those in Britain who con‑ tributed to the development of classical sociology. In this chapter we will set out the intellectual and professional context in which they made these contributions, setting the scene for our consideration of their personal and business relations in chapters 2 and 3 and their own intellectual concerns in the remainder of the book. STATISTICAL SOCIAL RESEARCH Although a number of the leading social thinkers of the nineteenth cen‑ tury used ethnographic and statistical data in their theoretical reflections, few were engaged in systematic data collection and analysis. There was, however, a parallel development of statistical survey work, undertaken in 5 © 2013 State University of New York Press, Albany 6 ENVISIONING SOCIOLOGY isolation from theoretical reflection and providing an independent source for a disciplinary sociology.
    [Show full text]
  • The Brookings Institution
    LIBERALISM-2009/04/16 1 THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM? Washington, D.C. Thursday, April 16, 2009 PARTICIPANTS: Moderator: WILLIAM GALSTON Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution Featured Speaker: ALAN WOLFE Professor and Director Boise Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College Panelists: E.J. DIONNE, JR. Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution ROSS DOUTHAT Senior Editor, The Atlantic * * * * * ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 706 Duke Street, Suite 100 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 LIBERALISM-2009/04/16 2 P R O C E E D I N G S MR. GALSTON: Well, ladies and gentlemen, people are still trickling, or should I say surging in. This is a wonderful crowd and a great tribute to the topic, and especially the author of the book that we’re gathered to discuss today. A few preliminaries; I should begin by introducing myself. I’m Bill Galston, a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies here at Brookings. And equally important, I should begin by introducing the series of which this event today is such a distinguished addition. The series is called Governing Ideas. Many of you have attended previous events, some of you haven’t, so forgive me for the repetition. The basic idea behind the Governing Ideas series is this: At Brookings and at think tanks around town, we spend an enormous amount of time debating public policy, and it’s right and proper that we do that, but we’re sometimes tempted to overlook that there is a context within which the discussion of public policy takes place.
    [Show full text]
  • Democratic Equality: What Went Wrong?
    Democratic Equality: What Went Wrong? In November 1998, the Institute and the J.S. Woodsworth Chair hosted a conference, “Equality and the Democratic State”. Papers were solicited from international scholars, social activists and decision-makers. Issues discussed were the status of social, political, and economic (in)equality, with particular reference to Canada, Britain and the United States. Participants included: Edward Broadbent, Dietrich Rueschemeyer (USA), G.A. Cohen (UK), Ian Angus (SFU), Jane Jenson (Université de Montréal), Ruth Lister, Social Policy (UK), Barbara Ehrenreich (US), Armine Yalnizyan (CANADA), John Richards (SFU), Jim Standford (Canadian Auto Workers), Bo Rothstein (Sweden), Daniel Savas (Angus Reid Group) and Bob Hackett (SFU). The conference papers were edited by Edward Broadbent and were published by the University of Toronto Press. concept of the new citizen), other important belief systems underlay the new broad-ranging political consensus on the positive role of the state. Conservatives could draw upon their idea of a ’social market economy,’ which had always distinguished itself from laissez-faire capitalism; liberals in quest of a positive notion of freedom could invoke T.H. Green, Leonard Hobhouse, and, above all others, John Stuart Mill. It was no accident that when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, it contained not only the civil and political freedoms of the Western tradition but also the new egalitarian social and economic rights. The Canadian John Humphrey, who prepared the first draft of the Declaration, wrote that it “attempted to combine humanitarian liberalism with social democracy.” Like Humphrey, most political leaders in most democracies had come to believe that without social and economic rights traditional political and civil liberties had little meaning for the majority.
    [Show full text]
  • The War Against Democracy in the Uk
    chapter 5 The War against Democracy in the uk Nick Stevenson The ideal of a deeper democracy than that offered by either authoritarian state societies or overtly capitalist societies remains central to any attempt to think critically. Here we perhaps need to remember that the Left in the European setting has a less than spotless record when it comes to questions of democ- racy. However the roots of a more emancipatory project in a period of human rights abuse, growing inequality, privatisation and authoritarian states remains the development of more genuinely democratic forms of the communication. If the wider media system continues to enforce a horizontal flow of informa- tion from centre to periphery then more critical social movements need to be able to offer visions and practices that challenge this logic. Intellectuals and social movements need to be able to offer visions of a more inclusive world where questions of voice, freedom and the right to communicate are meaning- ful. Such a world can-not be fostered by a mostly capitalist run media, a top down public service model or indeed a new communications media focused upon the spectacle. The possibility of a more authentic democracy depends upon a critical spirit sceptical of capital, the state and more ‘official’ forms of journalism. As George Orwell (1968a, 407) argued it is the responsibility of critical intellectuals to ‘keep the spirit of liberalism alive’. While Orwell is sometimes remembered as an ideologue of the cold war this is at best a form of displacement. Orwell warned against the arrival of a world where state’s and accepted political positions closed down different political positions thereby silencing criticism and independent thinking.
    [Show full text]
  • The Progressive Critique of Laissez Faire (Reviewing Barbara H
    University of Chicago Law School Chicago Unbound Journal Articles Faculty Scholarship 1999 The Assault that Failed: The Progressive Critique of Laissez Faire (reviewing Barbara H. Fried, The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire : Robert Hale and the First Law and Economics Movement (1998)) Richard A. Epstein Follow this and additional works at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Richard A. Epstein, "The Assault that Failed: The Progressive Critique of Laissez Faire (reviewing Barbara H. Fried, The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire : Robert Hale and the First Law and Economics Movement (1998))," 97 Michigan Law Review 1697 (199 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ASSAULT THAT FAILED: THE PROGRESSIVE CRITIQUE OF LAISSEZ FAIRE Richard A. Epstein* THE PROGRESSIVE ASSAULT ON LAISSEZ FAIRE: ROBERT HALE AND THE FIRST LAW AND ECONOMICS MovEMENT. By BarbaraH. Fried. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1998. Pp. x, 338. $55. PLAYING FOR ALL THE MARBLES Robert Lee Hale has long been an intellectual thorn in the side of the defenders of laissez faire, among whom I am quite happy to count myself. As Barbara Fried1 notes in her meticulous study of Hale's work, his name is hardly a household word. But both di- rectly and indirectly, his influence continues to be great. His best known work is perhaps Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State,2 published in 1923 as a review of Thomas Nixon Carver's Principles of NationalEconomy, 3 itself a defense of the classical principles of laissez faire, remembered today only for the drubbing that it took at Hale's hands.
    [Show full text]
  • Conceptual Affinities and Disparities
    Introduction European Liberal Discourses Conceptual Affinities and Disparities Michael Freeden and Javier Fernández-Sebastián The term ‘liberal’ occupies a special place in European culture. Its detractors and opponents may rail about its paternalism, its elitism, its oft-deplorable colonial record and, occasionally, its monadic individualism, but liberalism has been associated with emancipation, openness, reform, tolerance, legality, political accountability, the removal of barriers to human interaction and, above all, humanism, values on which most Europeans pride themselves – despite the horrendous events that struck at the heart of European civilization during the twentieth century. If that account may seem too starry-eyed, one has also to recall that many liberals themselves approached their creed from other, extra-humanist angles: the lifting of material economic constraints, a passport to modernization and a constitutional guarantor of a stable, conserv- atively inclined polity. Nor is that all when a conceptual story of Europe is undertaken. It is not only that many non-European societies have embraced and developed these liberal ideas further; contrary to the perspective adopted by many historical studies, as Javier Fernández-Sebastián demonstrates in his chapter, these ideas were preceded or paralleled in parts of Hispanic America, occasioning an early two-way transmission of liberal languages across the Atlantic. For many thinkers, liberalism is neither just an ideology nor a philosophical-political theory like any other, such as socialism, anarchism or conservatism, but rather a set of basic cultural postulates that opens the possibility of debate among all modern ideologies. In that sense, liberalism has often been equated with the mainstream of modern Western civilization and even with modernity as such.
    [Show full text]
  • The Comparative Psychology of Leonard T Hobhouse: Its Context and Conception
    eScholarship International Journal of Comparative Psychology Title The Comparative Psychology of Leonard T. Hobhouse: Its Context and Conception Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/67k218sc Journal International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 1(2) ISSN 0889-3675 Author Tolman, Charles W. Publication Date 1987 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California THE COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEONARD T HOBHOUSE: ITS CONTEXT AND CONCEPTION Charles W. Tolman University of Victoria ABSTRACT: Hobhouse viewed comparative psychology as playing a key role in his politically liberal, social-ethical worldview. The main feature of evolving mind was the increased capacity for democratic self-direction. Political reaction, identified with imperialism, attempts ideologically to obscure this fact, and thus to impede social progress. Its instruments are philosophical idealism and pseudo-scientific biologism or Social Darwinism. Comparative psychology, conceived as an essentially human psychology, could counteract this reactionary ideology with genuine scientific knowledge of present human capacity and future potential. These can only be revealed by a correct scientific approach, which, Hobhouse maintained, had to be evolutionary and comparative. ... .1 have long felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the n\arked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement.
    [Show full text]
  • The Assault That Failed: the Progressive Critique of Laissez Faire
    University of Chicago Law School Chicago Unbound Journal Articles Faculty Scholarship 1999 The Assault that Failed: The rP ogressive Critique of Laissez Faire (reviewing Barbara H. Fried, The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire : Robert Hale and the First Law and Economics Movement (1998)) Richard A. Epstein Follow this and additional works at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Richard A. Epstein, "The Assault that Failed: The rP ogressive Critique of Laissez Faire (reviewing Barbara H. Fried, The rP ogressive Assault on Laissez Faire : Robert Hale and the First Law and Economics Movement (1998))," 97 Michigan Law Review 1697 (199 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ASSAULT THAT FAILED: THE PROGRESSIVE CRITIQUE OF LAISSEZ FAIRE Richard A. Epstein* THE PROGRESSIVE ASSAULT ON LAISSEZ FAIRE: ROBERT HALE AND THE FIRST LAW AND ECONOMICS MovEMENT. By BarbaraH. Fried. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1998. Pp. x, 338. $55. PLAYING FOR ALL THE MARBLES Robert Lee Hale has long been an intellectual thorn in the side of the defenders of laissez faire, among whom I am quite happy to count myself. As Barbara Fried1 notes in her meticulous study of Hale's work, his name is hardly a household word. But both di- rectly and indirectly, his influence continues to be great. His best known work is perhaps Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State,2 published in 1923 as a review of Thomas Nixon Carver's Principles of NationalEconomy, 3 itself a defense of the classical principles of laissez faire, remembered today only for the drubbing that it took at Hale's hands.
    [Show full text]