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Liberalism: Classical, Reformist and Neo-Liberalism1 “Liberalism Is a Belief That Society Can Safely Be Founded on ... Self-Di Liberalism: Classical, Reformist and Neo-Liberalism1 “Liberalism is a belief that society can safely be founded on ... self-directing power of personality, that it is only on this foundation that a true community can be built, and that so established its foundations are so deep and so wide that there is no limit that we can place to the extent of the building.” – Hobhouse “[Liberalism is] an idea committed to freedom as a method and policy in government, as an organising principle in society, and a way of life for the individual and community.” – Encyclopaedia Britannica “Liberalism is a tentative attitude towards social problems which stresses the role of reason and human ingenuity.... Liberalism looks ahead with flexible approach; seeking to make future better for more people, as conservatism looks back aiming mainly to preserve the attainment of past.” – Grimes The elements of liberalism as a way of life and an outlook can be traced back to the classical Greece and Rome. The ideas of the Sophists, Protagoras and Gorgias, Democritus the atomist and Pericles in the ancient Greece and Solon, Cicero, Justinian, Constantine, Livy and Tacitus of the Roman age contain a multitude of liberal elements. Even the Christianity in its early stage also contained some liberal-individualistic elements. However, as a political current and an intellectual tradition, an identifiable strand in thought and practice, liberalism is no older than the 17 th century. Earlier the term ‘liberal’ used to denote the classical virtue of humanity, generosity and open-mindedness. During the Scottish Enlightenment the term was considered as a derivative of ‘liberality’. It was only in 1812 that the term was used for the first time to denote a political movement when ‘liberalism’ was adopted as the political ideology by the ‘Spanish Party of Liberals’. As a dynamic political ideology liberalism has been evolving and being reshaped constantly through the major events of the Western world, such as the dissolution of the feudal order and rise of the bourgeoisie as the dominating social class in Europe during the 16 th and 17 th centuries, the French and American revolutions in the late 18 th century, the emergence of democratic and socialist mass movements in the second half of the 19 th century and also by the near eclipse of the liberal society by totalitarian regimes in Europe in the first half of the 20 th century. Accordingly three distinct but overlapping phases of evolution of liberalism have been identified by the scholars. They are: • Classical liberalism , spanning from the 17 th century to the late 19 th century, with John Locke, James Mill, Jeremy Bentham, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and others as the chief propagators. • Reformist or Positive liberalism, spanning from the late 19 th to the late 20 th century, with John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hill Green, MacIver, Harold J. Laski, Sydney Webb, 1 Prepared by Sandipan Sen for PLSA – III Paper V Half 1 Topic 4a 1 Beatrice Webb, Lindsay, Ernest Barker, Hobhouse, Cole, J.M. Keynes and John Rawls among others as the main thinkers. • Contemporary or Neo-liberalism , emerging since the late 20 th century and running through the early 21 st century, being propagated by thinkers like Milton Friedman, Schumpeter, R.A. Dahl, F.A. Hayek, Robert Nozick and others. The distinctive features of liberalism, marked by its conception of man and society have been altered and reshaped throughout the last four hundred years, but they have not changed out of recognition. A common thread characterized by a definitive and modern conception of man and society consisting of four key elements, helps us to distinguish liberalism as a modern intellectual tradition and political movement from any other political ideologies, in spite of its ever-changing contours. These conceptual elements have been identified by John Gray in his Liberalism as the following: 1. Individualism : liberalism asserts the moral primacy of the person against the claims of any social collectivity. 2. Egalitarianism : liberalism confers all men the same moral status and denies relevance to legal or political order of differences in moral worth among human beings. 3. Universalism : liberalism affirms the moral unity of human species and accords secondary importance to specific historical or cultural forms. 4. Meliorism : liberalism affirms the corrigibility and improvability of all social institutions and political arrangements. Classical Liberalism The background of the emergence of liberalism as a political ideology was prepared during 16 th to 19 th centuries by the Reformation, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, Puritan and Glorious Revolutions in England, the Scottish Enlightenment, the French Enlightenment and the French Revolution and the American War of Independence. Nicolo Machiavelli made the pioneering attempts towards secularization of politics. Jean Bodin invented the concept of sovereignty to distinguish the secular authority from the divine one and provided the legal foundation of the bourgeois state. Rene Descartes emphasized the pursuit of material and scientific enquiry for human progress. Montesquieu pleaded for the separation of power to ensure the rule of law and termed liberty as something permitted by law. The modern systematic political theory begins with Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679). He provided a materialist or secular foundation of politics. For him political obligation was a deliberate rational activity of man and it was not guided by morality but self-interest and consent was the basis of authority. Thus he was a modernist. He considered the state and society as products of rational human deliberations not as natural phenomena. Hobbes was also an uncompromisingly individualist as he affirmed equal liberty to all men (egalitarianism) in the state of nature and rejected purely hereditary titles to political authority. 2 Benedict de Spinoza (1632 – 77) was also a modernist as he conceived of peace and freedom as conditions of one another. He considered liberal democracy as the preferred such political arrangements which can secure human freedom as it guaranteed the freedom of thought, expression and association. In spite of these seminal contributions to the emergence of liberalism, Hobbes and Spinoza are not considered as liberals, as they did not endorse the meliorist outlook of liberalism. For Hobbes, civil society was always likely to fall back into barbarous state of nature. And, for Spinoza, free man was a rarity, as most men were likely to be ruled by passion and illusion rather than reason. With the Whig ascendency following the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the debates during the English Civil War and ultimately in the ideas contained in the Two Treatises on Civil Government (1692) by John Locke (1632 – 1704) the central elements of the liberal outlook were crystallized for the first time. It was a strong assertion of parliamentary government under the rule of law against the monarchical absolutism, with an emphasis on freedom of association and private property. These aspects of the English political experience (for centuries) were theorized by Locke in his concept of ‘civil society’ of free men, equal under the rule of law, bound together by no common purpose but sharing a respect for each others’ rights. Some of the basic features of classical liberalism as identified by Hallowell in Main Currents in Modern Political Thought are as following: 1. Liberalism is a faith in spiritual equality of the individual and absolute value of the human personality. 2. It is a belief in rationality and goodness of man. 3. It is a belief in the existence of certain inalienable rights of man like the rights to life, liberty and property. 4. Liberalism is a consideration that the state is an artificial institution, which was created with the sole objective of preserving and protecting the rights of the individuals. 5. It is an assumption that the relationship between the state and individual is contractual and if a government fails to observe the terms of the contract and protect the rights of the people, the people have the right to replace it. 6. Liberalism is a faith in the rule of law instead of the rule by whims. 7. It is a consideration that the state is a necessary evil and the best state is one which performs the least. It has assigned negative functions to the state. 8. Liberalism is an affirmation of the freedom of individual in all aspects – political, social, cultural, economic, moral and spiritual. 9. Liberalism believes that the individual is a rational person and when he pursues his own interests; the interests of the society are automatically promoted. There is no contradiction between the interests of the individual and the society. 10. Liberalism believes that complete freedom in economic sphere and non-interference by the state in economic matters (laissez faire) is the best condition for the individual to pursue his self-interest. These principles are embodied in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, American Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789, and are considered 3 as the essence of classical liberal views on the nature of relationship between the individual and the state authority. Reformist or Positive Liberalism: By mid 19 th century, in the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution in England, the socio- economic disparities between the propertied class and the labouring classes were on the rise. As a consequence, different shades of socialist ideas emerged to voice the growing resentments of a vast majority of the population, challenging the existing social fabric and its constituting liberal ideas. In response to these challenges the necessity to reform some aspects of the classical liberal ideas was felt. The change in liberal philosophy first became visible in the writings of Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) and James Mill (1772 – 1836). They sought to reconcile the idea of individual liberty with the principle of general good or happiness.
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