Social Liberalism Mark Pack

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Mark Pack

Welcome to the next instalment in the weekly series about Liberal Democrat political philosophy. I hope you find it interesting and useful - and if you do, by all means let other people know that they too can sign up for the series.

The content draws very heavily on an excellent pamphlet edited by Duncan Brack for the Liberal Democrat History Group and by contributors to the group's (now sadly out of print) Dictionary of Liberal Thought. If you aren't familiar with the group's work, particularly the website and quarterly Journal of Liberal History, I'd highly recommend taking a look.

If you like elements of the emails that follow, most likely Duncan and colleagues deserve the credit. For the bits you don't like, the brickbats should come my way. Best wishes,

Mark

Social Liberalism Social liberals believe in individual freedom as a central objective – like all liberals. Unlike economic or classical liberals, however, they believe that factors such as poverty, unemployment, ill-health, disability and a lack of education are serious enough constraints on freedom that significant state action is justified to redress them. The British Liberal Democrats are generally considered a social liberal party, as are a number of other European liberal parties.

The development of social liberalism can be seen as a response to the problems of industrialisation in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Although free trade, the opening up of global markets and the transformation of European economies from agriculture to manufacturing delivered prosperity for many, these changes were accompanied by less positive trends, including in particular growing poverty amongst the new urban working classes.

In Britain, the New Liberalism of T.H. Green, L.T. Hobhouse and J.A. Hobson, among many others, was the response. They argued that laissez-faire economic policies and the unrestrained pursuit of profit had given rise to new forms of poverty and injustice; the economic liberty of the few had blighted the life chances of the many. The central aim of classical liberalism, the removal of constraints on the individual, they argued, would not lead to freedom of choice for all, as not everyone enjoyed access to the same opportunities. A prince and a pauper might have the same rights under the law. That did not give them the same opportunities in life.

Green proposed the idea of positive freedom: the ability of the individual to develop and attain individuality through personal self-development and self-realisation. Since much of the population was prevented from such self-realisation by the impediments of poverty, sickness, unemployment and ignorance, government was justified in taking action to tackle all those conditions. This was not a threat to liberty, but the necessary guarantee of it. As David Lloyd George put it in 1908, "British Liberalism is not going to repeat the errors of Continental Liberalism … Let Liberalism proceed with its glorious work of building up the temple of liberty in this country, but let it also bear in mind that the worshippers at the shrine have to live."

The social reforms of the 1906–15 Liberal government, including the introduction of old- age pensions, national insurance and progressive taxation, can be seen as the realisation of the New Liberal social programme in action, though it drew its inspiration from many sources, including the experience of the active municipal liberalism of Joseph Chamberlain and other Liberals in local government. Later in the century, the economic genius of J. M. Keynes, the imaginativeness of Lloyd George’s ‘Yellow Book’, Britain’s Industrial Future, and the welfare reforms of William Beveridge seemed to cement the triumph of social liberalism.

The distinction between social and economic (or classical) liberals revolves around attitudes to the balance between the free market and state intervention. Social liberals do not generally question the value of market-based economies, but accept a significant role for state action in adjusting or supplementing market outcomes, for example through generous welfare provision, socialised medical care and state education. This usually implies a higher level of taxation than economic liberals desire, and also a greater role for the use of redistributive fiscal policy. More recently, social liberals have also tended to accept a growing role for the state in regulating economic activity to tackle environmental degradation.

The growth in the size of the state throughout the twentieth century, however, has led to new problems, summarised in last week's instalment on classical/economic liberalism. In response, in many European countries since the war, economic liberals made something of a comeback, drawing intellectual strength from writers such as Friedrich von Hayek and, more recently, Robert Nozick.

Despite this resurgence of economic liberal thinking, in Britain the Liberal Party/Liberal Democrats has remained a social liberal party, retaining their beliefs in an activist role for the state, particularly over public services and environmental issues, and in taxation policy. This position seemed to be challenged by the publication of the avowedly economic-liberal Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism in 2004, though in reality most of the book’s contents were existing party policy. A riposte, Reinventing the State: Social Liberalism for the 21st Century, was published in 2007, and a perceived attempt to shift the party under Nick Clegg’s leadership led to the formation of the Social Liberal Forum in 2009 to campaign for social-liberal values.

Even under the coalition with the Conservative Party in 2010–15, however, the party remained fundamentally social liberal in character. Liberal Democrat ministers spent much of their time fighting off the deregulatory obsessions of their coalition partners and promoting such social-liberal approaches as the pupil premium, support for renewable energy and green industry, or free school meals for the youngest children.

Although they accept the need for state intervention, social liberals have responded to the dangers of the growth in state power highlighted by Hayek and others. The social liberal answer, though, is not, in general, to seek the withdrawal of the state from areas of activity, but to make it more accountable and responsive to its citizens, for instance through the decentralisation of power, the creation of federal systems of government, electoral reform the use of mechanisms such as written constitutions to control state power. In this way, social liberals can be distinguished from social democrats, who tend to be much less suspicious of state power, although they may share similar approaches to the mixed economy. As argued above, however, there is no firm divide between social liberalism and economic liberalism; rather, there is a spectrum of views and positions, depending strongly on the economic and social circumstances in a given country at a given time.

There is no general answer to the question of how much government intervention is enough, or how big the state should be. This is because of the need to deal both with market failure and with government failure, and because the appropriate level of state involvement, and the size of the state, varies so widely over time and across areas of activity. Differences of opinion over this question lie at the root of the disagreements between economic liberals and social liberals, but individual liberals’ views range over a broad spectrum rather being separated into two firm camps. And what unites liberals of both tendencies – a commitment to civil liberties, human rights, open and tolerant societies, and a just international order – has usually proven stronger than what may divide them.

Social and economic liberals may differ over economic means, but they do not disagree over their ends.