Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy
based on liberty and equality. Liberals espouse
a wide array of views depending on their understanding
of these principles, but they generally support
civil rights, democracy, secularism, gender
equality, racial equality, internationalism,
freedom of speech, freedom of the press and
freedom of religion.Liberalism became a distinct
movement in the Age of Enlightenment, when
it became popular among Western philosophers
and economists. Liberalism sought to replace
the norms of hereditary privilege, state religion,
absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings
and traditional conservatism with representative
democracy and the rule of law. Liberals also
ended mercantilist policies, royal monopolies
and other barriers to trade, instead promoting
free markets. Philosopher John Locke is often
credited with founding liberalism as a distinct
tradition, arguing that each man has a natural
right to life, liberty and property, adding
that governments must not violate these rights
based on the social contract. While the British
liberal tradition has emphasised expanding
democracy, French liberalism has emphasised
rejecting authoritarianism and is linked to
nation-building.Leaders in the Glorious Revolution
of 1688, the American Revolution of 1776 and
the French Revolution of 1789 used liberal
philosophy to justify the armed overthrow
of royal tyranny. Liberalism started to spread
rapidly especially after the French Revolution.
The 19th century saw liberal governments established
in nations across Europe and South America,
whereas it was well-established alongside
republicanism in the United States. In Victorian
Britain, it was used to critique the political
establishment, appealing to science and reason
on behalf of the people. During 19th and early
20th century, liberalism in the Ottoman Empire
and Middle East influenced periods of reform
such as the Tanzimat and Al-Nahda as well
as the rise of secularism, constitutionalism
and nationalism. These changes, along with
other factors, helped to create a sense of
crisis within Islam, which continues to this
day, leading to Islamic revivalism. Before
1920, the main ideological opponent of classical
liberalism was conservatism, but liberalism
then faced major ideological challenges from
new opponents: fascism and communism. However,
during the 20th century liberal ideas also
spread even further—especially in Western
Europe—as liberal democracies found themselves
on the winning side in both 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 welfare
state. Today, liberal parties continue to
wield power and influence throughout the world.
However, liberalism still has challenges to
overcome in Africa and Asia. The fundamental
elements of contemporary society have liberal
roots. The early waves of liberalism popularised
economic individualism while expanding constitutional
government and parliamentary authority. Liberals
sought and established a constitutional order
that prized important individual freedoms,
such as freedom of speech and freedom of association;
an independent judiciary and public trial
by jury; and the abolition of aristocratic
privileges. Later waves of modern liberal
thought and struggle were strongly influenced
by the need to expand civil rights. Liberals
have advocated gender and racial equality
in their drive to promote civil rights and
a global civil rights movement in the 20th
century achieved several objectives towards
both goals. Continental European liberalism
is divided between moderates and progressives,
with the moderates tending to elitism and
the progressives supporting the universalisation
of fundamental institutions, such as universal
suffrage, universal education and the expansion
of property rights. Over time, the moderates
displaced the progressives as the main guardians
of continental European liberalism.
== Etymology and definition ==
Words such as liberal, liberty, libertarian
and libertine all trace their history to the
Latin liber, which means "free". One of the
first recorded instances of the word "liberal"
occurs in 1375, when it was used to describe
the liberal arts in the context of an education
desirable for a free-born man. The word's
early connection with the classical education
of a medieval university soon gave way to
a proliferation of different denotations and
connotations. "Liberal" could refer to "free
in bestowing" as early as 1387, "made without
stint" in 1433, "freely permitted" in 1530
and "free from restraint"—often as a pejorative
remark—in the 16th and the 17th centuries.
In 16th century England, "liberal" could have
positive or negative attributes in referring
to someone's generosity or indiscretion. In
Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare
wrote of "a liberal villaine" who "hath [...] confest
his vile encounters". With the rise of the
Enlightenment, the word acquired decisively
more positive undertones, being defined as
"free from narrow prejudice" in 1781 and "free
from bigotry" in 1823. In 1815, the first
use of the word "liberalism" appeared in English.
In Spain, the liberales, the first group to
use the liberal label in a political context,
fought for decades for the implementation
of the 1812 Constitution. From 1820 to 1823
during the Trienio Liberal, King Ferdinand
VII was compelled by the liberales to swear
to uphold the Constitution. By the middle
of the 19th century, "liberal" was used as
a politicised term for parties and movements
worldwide.Over time, the meaning of the word
"liberalism" began to diverge in different
parts of the world. According to the Encyclopædia
Britannica: "In the United States, liberalism
is associated with the welfare-state policies
of the New Deal programme of the Democratic
administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt,
whereas in Europe it is more commonly associated
with a commitment to limited government and
laissez-faire economic policies". Consequently,
in the United States the ideas of individualism
and laissez-faire economics previously associated
with classical liberalism became the basis
for the emerging school of libertarian thought
and are key components of American conservatism.
Unlike Europe and Latin America, the word
"liberalism" in North America almost exclusively
refers to social liberalism. The dominant
Canadian party is the Liberal Party and the
United States' Democratic Party is usually
considered liberal.
== Philosophy ==
Liberalism—both as a political current and
an intellectual tradition—is mostly a modern
phenomenon that started in the 17th century,
although some liberal philosophical ideas
had precursors in classical antiquity and
in Imperial China. The Roman Emperor Marcus
Aurelius praised, "the idea of a polity administered
with regard to equal rights and equal freedom
of speech, and the idea of a kingly government
which respects most of all the freedom of
the governed". Scholars have also recognised
a number of principles familiar to contemporary
liberals in the works of several Sophists
and in the Funeral Oration by Pericles. Liberal
philosophy symbolises an extensive intellectual
tradition that has examined and popularised
some of the most important and controversial
principles of the modern world. Its immense
scholarly and academic output has been characterised
as containing "richness and diversity", but
that diversity often has meant that liberalism
comes in different formulations and presents
a challenge to anyone looking for a clear
definition.
=== Major themes ===
Though all liberal doctrines possess a common
heritage, scholars frequently assume that
those doctrines contain "separate and often
contradictory streams of thought". The objectives
of liberal theorists and philosophers have
differed across various times, cultures and
continents. The diversity of liberalism can
be gleaned from the numerous adjectives that
liberal thinkers and movements have attached
to the very term "liberalism", including classical,
egalitarian, economic, social, welfare state,
ethical, humanist, deontological, perfectionist,
democratic and institutional, to name a few.
Despite these variations, liberal thought
does exhibit a few definite and fundamental
conceptions. At its very root, liberalism
is a philosophy about the meaning of humanity
and society.
Political philosopher John Gray identified
the common strands in liberal thought as being
individualist, egalitarian, meliorist and
universalist. The individualist element avers
the ethical primacy of the human being against
the pressures of social collectivism, the
egalitarian element assigns the same moral
worth and status to all individuals, the meliorist
element asserts that successive generations
can improve their sociopolitical arrangements
and the universalist element affirms the moral
unity of the human species and marginalises
local cultural differences. The meliorist
element has been the subject of much controversy,
defended by thinkers such as Immanuel Kant
who believed in human progress while suffering
criticism by thinkers such as Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, who instead believed that human
attempts to improve themselves through social
cooperation would fail. Describing the liberal
temperament, Gray claimed that it "has been
inspired by scepticism and by a fideistic
certainty of divine revelation [...] it has
exalted the power of reason even as, in other
contexts, it has sought to humble reason's
claims".The liberal philosophical tradition
has searched for validation and justification
through several intellectual projects. The
moral and political suppositions of liberalism
have been based on traditions such as natural
rights and utilitarian theory, although sometimes
liberals even requested support from scientific
and religious circles. Through all these strands
and traditions, scholars have identified the
following major common facets of liberal thought:
believing in equality and individual liberty,
supporting private property and individual
rights, supporting the idea of limited constitutional
government, and recognising the importance
of related values such as pluralism, toleration,
autonomy, bodily integrity and consent.
=== Classical and modern ===
Enlightenment philosophers are given credit
for shaping liberal ideas. These ideas were
first drawn together and systematized as a
distinct ideology by the English philosopher
John Locke, generally regarded as the father
of modern liberalism. Thomas Hobbes attempted
to determine the purpose and the justification
of governing authority in a post-civil war
England. Employing the idea of a state of
nature—a hypothetical war-like scenario
prior to the state—he constructed the idea
of a social contract that individuals enter
into to guarantee their security and in so
doing form the State, concluding that only
an absolute sovereign would be fully able
to sustain such a peace. Hobbes had developed
the concept of the social contract, according
to which individuals in the anarchic and brutal
state of nature came together and voluntarily
ceded some of their individual rights to an
established state authority, which would create
laws to regulate social interactions. Whereas
Hobbes advocated a strong monarchical authority
(the Leviathan), Locke developed the then
radical notion that government acquires consent
from the governed which has to be constantly
present for the government to remain legitimate.
While adopting Hobbes's idea of a state of
nature and social contract, Locke nevertheless
argued that when the monarch becomes a tyrant,
it constituted a violation of the social contract,
which bestows life, liberty and property as
a natural right. He concluded that the people
have a right to overthrow a tyrant. By placing
life, liberty and property as the supreme
value of law and authority, Locke formulated
the basis of liberalism based on social contract
theory. To these early enlightenment thinkers,
securing the most essential amenities of life—liberty
and private property among them—required
the formation of a "sovereign" authority with
universal jurisdiction.His influential Two
Treatises (1690), the foundational text of
liberal ideology, outlined his major ideas.
Once humans moved out of their natural state
and formed societies, Locke argued as follows:
"Thus that which begins and actually constitutes
any political society is nothing but the consent
of any number of freemen capable of a majority
to unite and incorporate into such a society.
And this is that, and that only, which did
or could give beginning to any lawful government
in the world". The stringent insistence that
lawful government did not have a supernatural
basis was a sharp break with the dominant
theories of governance which advocated the
divine right of kings and echoed the earlier
thought of Aristotle. One political scientist
described this new thinking as follows: "In
the liberal understanding, there are no citizens
within the regime who can claim to rule by
natural or supernatural right, without the
consent of the governed".Locke had other intellectual
opponents besides Hobbes. In the First Treatise,
Locke aimed his guns first and foremost at
one of the doyens of 17th century English
conservative philosophy: Robert Filmer. Filmer's
Patriarcha (1680) argued for the divine right
of kings by appealing to biblical teaching,
claiming that the authority granted to Adam
by God gave successors of Adam in the male
line of descent a right of dominion over all
other humans and creatures in the world. However,
Locke disagreed so thoroughly and obsessively
with Filmer that the First Treatise is almost
a sentence-by-sentence refutation of Patriarcha.
Reinforcing his respect for consensus, Locke
argued that "conjugal society is made up by
a voluntary compact between men and women".
Locke maintained that the grant of dominion
in Genesis was not to men over women, as Filmer
believed, but to humans over animals. Locke
was certainly no feminist by modern standards,
but the first major liberal thinker in history
accomplished an equally major task on the
road to making the world more pluralistic:
the integration of women into social theory.
Locke also originated the concept of the separation
of church and state. Based on the social contract
principle, Locke argued that the government
lacked authority in the realm of individual
conscience, as this was something rational
people could not cede to the government for
it or others to control. For Locke, this created
a natural right in the liberty of conscience,
which he argued must therefore remain protected
from any government authority. He also formulated
a general defence for religious toleration
in his Letters Concerning Toleration. Three
arguments are central: (1) earthly judges,
the state in particular, and human beings
generally, cannot dependably evaluate the
truth-claims of competing religious standpoints;
(2) even if they could, enforcing a single
"true religion" would not have the desired
effect because belief cannot be compelled
by violence; (3) coercing religious uniformity
would lead to more social disorder than allowing
diversity.Locke was also influenced by the
liberal ideas of Presbyterian politician and
poet John Milton, who was a staunch advocate
of freedom in all its forms. Milton argued
for disestablishment as the only effective
way of achieving broad toleration. Rather
than force a man's conscience, government
should recognise the persuasive force of the
gospel. As assistant to Oliver Cromwell, Milton
also took part in drafting a constitution
of the independents (Agreement of the People;
1647) that strongly stressed the equality
of all humans as a consequence of democratic
tendencies. In his Areopagitica, Milton provided
one of the first arguments for the importance
of freedom of speech—"the liberty to know,
to utter, and to argue freely according to
conscience, above all liberties". His central
argument was that the individual is capable
of using reason to distinguish right from
wrong. To be able to exercise this right,
everyone must have unlimited access to the
ideas of his fellow men in "a free and open
encounter" and this will allow the good arguments
to prevail.
In a natural state of affairs, liberals argued,
humans were driven by the instincts of survival
and self-preservation and the only way to
escape from such a dangerous existence was
to form a common and supreme power capable
of arbitrating between competing human desires.
This power could be formed in the framework
of a civil society that allows individuals
to make a voluntary social contract with the
sovereign authority, transferring their natural
rights to that authority in return for the
protection of life, liberty and property.
These early liberals often disagreed about
the most appropriate form of government, but
they all shared the belief that liberty was
natural and that its restriction needed strong
justification. Liberals generally believed
in limited government, although several liberal
philosophers decried government outright,
with Thomas Paine writing "government even
in its best state is a necessary evil".As
part of the project to limit the powers of
government, various liberal theorists such
as James Madison and Montesquieu conceived
the notion of separation of powers, a system
designed to equally distribute governmental
authority among the executive, legislative
and judicial branches. Governments had to
realise, liberals maintained, that poor and
improper governance gave the people authority
to overthrow the ruling order through any
and all possible means, even through outright
violence and revolution, if needed. Contemporary
liberals, heavily influenced by social liberalism,
have continued to support limited constitutional
government while also advocating for state
services and provisions to ensure equal rights.
Modern liberals claim that formal or official
guarantees of individual rights are irrelevant
when individuals lack the material means to
benefit from those rights and call for a greater
role for government in the administration
of economic affairs. Early liberals also laid
the groundwork for the separation of church
and state. As heirs of the Enlightenment,
liberals believed that any given social and
political order emanated from human interactions,
not from divine will. Many liberals were openly
hostile to religious belief itself, but most
concentrated their opposition to the union
of religious and political authority, arguing
that faith could prosper on its own, without
official sponsorship or administration by
the state.Beyond identifying a clear role
for government in modern society, liberals
also have obsessed over the meaning and nature
of the most important principle in liberal
philosophy, namely liberty. From the 17th
century until the 19th century, liberals (from
Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill) conceptualised
liberty as the absence of interference from
government and from other individuals, claiming
that all people should have the freedom to
develop their own unique abilities and capacities
without being sabotaged by others. Mill's
On Liberty (1859), one of the classic texts
in liberal philosophy, proclaimed, "the only
freedom which deserves the name, is that of
pursuing our own good in our own way". Support
for laissez-faire capitalism is often associated
with this principle, with Friedrich Hayek
arguing in The Road to Serfdom (1944) that
reliance on free markets would preclude totalitarian
control by the state.
The development into maturity of classical
liberalism took place before and after the
French Revolution in Britain and was based
on the following core concepts: classical
economics, free trade, laissez-faire government
with minimal intervention and taxation and
a balanced budget. Classical liberals were
committed to individualism, liberty and equal
rights. Writers such as John Bright and Richard
Cobden opposed both aristocratic privilege
and property, which they saw as an impediment
to the development of a class of yeoman farmers.
Beginning in the late 19th century, a new
conception of liberty entered the liberal
intellectual arena. This new kind of liberty
became known as positive liberty to distinguish
it from the prior negative version and it
was first developed by British philosopher
Thomas Hill Green. Green rejected the idea
that humans were driven solely by self-interest,
emphasising instead the complex circumstances
that are involved in the evolution of our
moral character. In a very profound step for
the future of modern liberalism, he also tasked
society and political institutions with the
enhancement of individual freedom and identity
and the development of moral character, will
and reason and the state to create the conditions
that allow for the above, giving the opportunity
for genuine choice. Foreshadowing the new
liberty as the freedom to act rather than
to avoid suffering from the acts of others,
Green wrote the following: If it were ever
reasonable to wish that the usage of words
had been other than it has been [...] one
might be inclined to wish that the term 'freedom'
had been confined to the [...] power to do
what one wills.
Rather than previous liberal conceptions viewing
society as populated by selfish individuals,
Green viewed society as an organic whole in
which all individuals have a duty to promote
the common good. His ideas spread rapidly
and were developed by other thinkers such
as Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse and John A. Hobson.
In a few years, this New Liberalism had become
the essential social and political programme
of the Liberal Party in Britain and it would
encircle much of the world in the 20th century.
In addition to examining negative and positive
liberty, liberals have tried to understand
the proper relationship between liberty and
democracy. As they struggled to expand suffrage
rights, liberals increasingly understood that
people left out of the democratic decision-making
process were liable to the "tyranny of the
majority", a concept explained in Mill's On
Liberty and in Democracy in America (1835)
by Alexis de Tocqueville. As a response, liberals
began demanding proper safeguards to thwart
majorities in their attempts at suppressing
the rights of minorities.Besides liberty,
liberals have developed several other principles
important to the construction of their philosophical
structure, such as equality, pluralism and
toleration. Highlighting the confusion over
the first principle, Voltaire commented that
"equality is at once the most natural and
at times the most chimeral of things". All
forms of liberalism assume in some basic sense
that individuals are equal. In maintaining
that people are naturally equal, liberals
assume that they all possess the same right
to liberty. In other words, no one is inherently
entitled to enjoy the benefits of liberal
society more than anyone else and all people
are equal subjects before the law. Beyond
this basic conception, liberal theorists diverge
on their understanding of equality. American
philosopher John Rawls emphasised the need
to ensure not only equality under the law,
but also the equal distribution of material
resources that individuals required to develop
their aspirations in life. Libertarian thinker
Robert Nozick disagreed with Rawls, championing
the former version of Lockean equality instead.To
contribute to the development of liberty,
liberals also have promoted concepts like
pluralism and toleration. By pluralism, liberals
refer to the proliferation of opinions and
beliefs that characterise a stable social
order. Unlike many of their competitors and
predecessors, liberals do not seek conformity
and homogeneity in the way that people think.
In fact, their efforts have been geared towards
establishing a governing framework that harmonises
and minimises conflicting views, but still
allows those views to exist and flourish.
For liberal philosophy, pluralism leads easily
to toleration. Since individuals will hold
diverging viewpoints, liberals argue, they
ought to uphold and respect the right of one
another to disagree. From the liberal perspective,
toleration was initially connected to religious
toleration, with Baruch Spinoza condemning
"the stupidity of religious persecution and
ideological wars". Toleration also played
a central role in the ideas of Kant and John
Stuart Mill. Both thinkers believed that society
will contain different conceptions of a good
ethical life and that people should be allowed
to make their own choices without interference
from the state or other individuals.
=== Liberal economic theory ===
Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, published
in 1776, was to provide most of the ideas
of economics at least until the publication
of John Stuart Mill's Principles in 1848.
Smith addressed the motivation for economic
activity, the causes of prices and the distribution
of wealth and the policies the state should
follow in order to maximise wealth.Smith wrote
that as long as supply, demand, prices and
competition were left free of government regulation,
the pursuit of material self-interest, rather
than altruism, would maximise the wealth of
a society through profit-driven production
of goods and services. An "invisible hand"
directed individuals and firms to work toward
the nation's good as an unintended consequence
of efforts to maximise their own gain. This
provided a moral justification for the accumulation
of wealth, which had previously been viewed
by some as sinful.Smith assumed that workers
could be paid as low as was necessary for
their survival, which was later transformed
by David Ricardo and Thomas Robert Malthus
into the "iron law of wages". His main emphasis
was on the benefit of free internal and international
trade, which he thought could increase wealth
through specialisation in production. He also
opposed restrictive trade preferences, state
grants of monopolies and employers' organisations
and trade unions. Government should be limited
to defence, public works and the administration
of justice, financed by taxes based on income.
Smith was one of the progenitors of the idea,
which was long central to classical liberalism
and has resurfaced in the globalisation literature
of the later 20th and early 21st centuries,
that free trade promotes peace. 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
Smith's legacy, Say's law, Malthus theories
of population and Ricardo's iron law of wages
became central doctrines of classical 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. Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle
of Population in 1798, becoming a major influence
on classical liberalism. Malthus claimed that
population growth would outstrip food production
because population grew geometrically while
food production grew arithmetically. As people
were provided with food, they would reproduce
until their growth outstripped the food supply.
Nature would then provide a check to growth
in the forms of vice and misery. No gains
in income could prevent this and any welfare
for the poor would be self-defeating. The
poor were in fact responsible for their own
problems which could have been avoided through
self-restraint.Several liberals, including
Adam Smith and Richard Cobden, argued that
the free exchange of goods between nations
would lead to world peace. Smith argued that
as societies progressed the spoils of war
would rise, but the costs of war would rise
further, making war difficult and costly for
industrialised nations. Cobden believed that
military expenditures worsened the welfare
of the state and benefited a small but concentrated
elite minority, summing up British imperialism,
which he believed was the result of the economic
restrictions of mercantilist policies. To
Cobden and many classical liberals, those
who advocated peace must also advocate free
markets.
Utilitarianism provided the political justification
for the implementation of economic liberalism
by British governments, which was to dominate
economic policy from the 1830s. Although utilitarianism
prompted legislative and administrative reform
and John Stuart Mill's later writings on the
subject foreshadowed the welfare state, it
was mainly used as a justification for laissez-faire.
The central concept of utilitarianism, 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 action to reduce poverty, it was
used by classical liberals to justify inaction
with the argument that the net benefit to
all individuals would be higher. His philosophy
proved to be extremely influential on government
policy and led to increased Benthamite attempts
at government social control, including Robert
Peel's Metropolitan Police, prison reforms,
the workhouses and asylums for the mentally
ill.
==== Keynesian economics ====
During the Great Depression, the definitive
liberal response to it was given by the English
economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946).
Keynes had been "brought up" as a classical
liberal, but especially after World War I
became increasingly a welfare or social liberal.
A prolific writer, among many other works,
he had begun a theoretical work examining
the relationship between unemployment, money
and prices back in the 1920s. Keynes was deeply
critical of the British government's austerity
measures during the Great Depression. He believed
that budget deficits were a good thing, a
product of recessions. He wrote: "For Government
borrowing of one kind or another is nature's
remedy, so to speak, for preventing business
losses from being, in so severe a slump as
to present one, so great as to bring production
altogether to a standstill". At the height
of the Great Depression in 1933, Keynes published
The Means to Prosperity, which contained specific
policy recommendations for tackling unemployment
in a global recession, chiefly counter cyclical
public spending. The Means to Prosperity contains
one of the first mentions of the multiplier
effect.Keynes's magnum opus, The General Theory
of Employment, Interest and Money, was published
in 1936 and served as a theoretical justification
for the interventionist policies Keynes favoured
for tackling a recession. The General Theory
challenged the earlier neo-classical economic
paradigm, which had held that provided it
was unfettered by government interference,
the market would naturally establish full
employment equilibrium. Classical economists
had believed in Say's law, which simply put
states that "supply creates its own demand"
and that in a free market workers would always
be willing to lower their wages to a level
where employers could profitably offer them
jobs. An innovation from Keynes was the concept
of price stickiness, i.e. the recognition
that in reality workers often refuse to lower
their wage demands even in cases where a classical
economist might argue it is rational for them
to do so. Due in part to price stickiness,
it was established that the interaction of
"aggregate demand" and "aggregate supply"
may lead to stable unemployment equilibria
and in those cases it is the state and not
the market that economies must depend on for
their salvation. The book advocated activist
economic policy by government to stimulate
demand in times of high unemployment, for
example by spending on public works. In 1928,
he wrote: "Let us be up and doing, using our
idle resources to increase our wealth. [...] With
men and plants unemployed, it is ridiculous
to say that we cannot afford these new developments.
It is precisely with these plants and these
men that we shall afford them". Where the
market failed to properly allocate resources,
the government was required to stimulate the
economy until private funds could start flowing
again—a "prime the pump" kind of strategy
designed to boost industrial production.
=== Liberal feminist theory ===
Liberal feminism, the dominant tradition in
feminist history, is an individualistic form
of feminist theory which focuses on women's
ability to maintain their equality through
their own actions and choices. Liberal feminists
hope to eradicate all barriers to gender equality,
claiming that the continued existence of such
barriers eviscerates the individual rights
and freedoms ostensibly guaranteed by a liberal
social order. They argue that society holds
the false belief that women are by nature
less intellectually and physically capable
than men; thus it tends to discriminate against
women in the academy, the forum and the marketplace.
Liberal feminists believe that "female subordination
is rooted in a set of customary and legal
constraints that blocks women's entrance to
and success in the so-called public world".
They strive for sexual equality via political
and legal reform.British philosopher Mary
Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) is widely regarded
as the pioneer of liberal feminism, with A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
expanding the boundaries of liberalism to
include women in the political structure of
liberal society. In her writings such as A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft
commented on society's view of the woman and
encouraged women to use their voices in making
decisions separate from decisions previously
made for them. Wollstonecraft "denied that
women are, by nature, more pleasure seeking
and pleasure giving than men. She reasoned
that if they were confined to the same cages
that trap women, men would develop the same
flawed characters. What Wollstonecraft most
wanted for women was personhood".John Stuart
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 is wrong and
that it should give way to perfect equality.
He believed that both sexes should have equal
rights under the law and that "until conditions
of equality exist, no one can possibly assess
the natural differences between women and
men, distorted as they have been. What is
natural to the two sexes can only be found
out by allowing both to develop and use their
faculties freely". Mill frequently spoke of
this imbalance and wondered if women were
able to feel the same "genuine unselfishness"
that men did in providing for their families.
This unselfishness Mill advocated is the one
"that motivates people to take into account
the good of society as well as the good of
the individual person or small family unit".
Similar to Mary Wollstonecraft, Mill compared
sexual inequality to slavery, arguing that
their husbands are often just as abusive as
masters and that a human being controls nearly
every aspect of life for another human being.
In his book The Subjection of Women, Mill
argues that three major parts of women's lives
are hindering them: society and gender construction,
education and marriage.Equity feminism is
a form of liberal feminism discussed since
the 1980s, specifically a kind of classically
liberal or libertarian feminism. Steven Pinker,
an evolutionary psychologist, defines equity
feminism as "a moral doctrine about equal
treatment that makes no commitments regarding
open empirical issues in psychology or biology".
Barry Kuhle asserts that equity feminism is
compatible with evolutionary psychology in
contrast to gender feminism.
=== Social liberal theory ===
Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi's
Nouveaux principes d'économie politique,
ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la
population (1819) represents the first comprehensive
liberal critique of early capitalism and laissez-faire
economics, and his writings, which were studied
by John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx among many
others, had a profound influence on both liberal
and socialist responses to the failures and
contradictions of industrial society. By the
end of the 19th century, the principles of
classical liberalism were being increasingly
challenged by downturns in economic growth,
a growing perception of the evils of poverty,
unemployment and relative deprivation present
within modern industrial cities as well as
the agitation of organised labour. The ideal
of the self-made individual, who through hard
work and talent could make his or her place
in the world, seemed increasingly implausible.
A major political reaction against the changes
introduced by industrialisation and laissez-faire
capitalism came from conservatives concerned
about social balance, although socialism later
became a more important force for change and
reform. Some Victorian writers, including
Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle and Matthew
Arnold, became early influential critics of
social injustice.New liberals began to adapt
the old language of liberalism to confront
these difficult circumstances, which they
believed could only be resolved through a
broader and more interventionist conception
of the state. An equal right to liberty could
not be established merely by ensuring that
individuals did not physically interfere with
each other, or merely by having laws that
were impartially formulated and applied. More
positive and proactive measures were required
to ensure that every individual would have
an equal opportunity of success.
John Stuart Mill contributed enormously to
liberal thought by combining elements of classical
liberalism with what eventually became known
as the new liberalism. Mill's 1859 On Liberty
addressed the nature and limits of the power
that can be legitimately exercised by society
over the individual. He gave an impassioned
defence of free speech, arguing that free
discourse is a necessary condition for intellectual
and social progress. Mill defined "social
liberty" as protection from "the tyranny of
political rulers". He introduced a number
of different concepts of the form tyranny
can take, referred to as social tyranny and
tyranny of the majority, respectively. Social
liberty meant limits on the ruler's power
through obtaining recognition of political
liberties or rights and by the establishment
of a system of "constitutional checks".His
definition of liberty, influenced by Joseph
Priestley and Josiah Warren, was that the
individual ought to be free to do as he wishes
unless he harms others. However, 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.
Another early liberal convert to greater government
intervention was Thomas Hill Green. Seeing
the effects of alcohol, he believed 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.
The New Liberalism or social liberalism movement
emerged about 1900 in Britain. The New Liberals,
which included intellectuals like L. T. Hobhouse
and John A. Hobson, saw individual liberty
as something achievable only under favorable
social and economic circumstances. In their
view, the poverty, squalor and ignorance in
which many people lived made it impossible
for freedom and individuality to flourish.
New Liberals believed that these conditions
could be ameliorated only through collective
action coordinated by a strong, welfare-oriented
and interventionist state. It supports a mixed
economy that includes both public and private
property in capital goods.Principles that
can be described as liberal socialist have
been based upon or developed by the following
philosophers: John Stuart Mill, Eduard Bernstein,
John Dewey, Carlo Rosselli, Norberto Bobbio
and Chantal Mouffe. Other important liberal
socialist figures include Guido Calogero,
Piero Gobetti, Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse and
R. H. Tawney. Liberal socialism has been particularly
prominent in British and Italian politics.
=== Anarcho-capitalist theory ===
Classical liberalism advocates free trade
under the rule of law. Anarcho-capitalism
goes one step further, with law enforcement
and the courts being provided by private companies.
Various theorists have espoused legal philosophies
similar to anarcho-capitalism. One of the
first liberals to discuss the possibility
of privatizing protection of individual liberty
and property was France's Jakob Mauvillon
in the 18th century. Later in the 1840s, Julius
Faucher and Gustave de Molinari advocated
the same. In his essay The Production of Security,
Molinari argued: "No government should have
the right to prevent another government from
going into competition with it, or to require
consumers of security to come exclusively
to it for this commodity". Molinari and this
new type of anti-state liberal grounded their
reasoning on liberal ideals and classical
economics. Historian and libertarian Ralph
Raico argues that what these liberal philosophers
"had come up with was a form of individualist
anarchism, or, as it would be called today,
anarcho-capitalism or market anarchism". Unlike
the liberalism of Locke, which saw the state
as evolving from society, the anti-state liberals
saw a fundamental conflict between the voluntary
interactions of people, i.e. society; and
the institutions of force, i.e. the state.
This society versus state idea was expressed
in various ways: natural society vs. artificial
society, liberty vs. authority, society of
contract vs. society of authority and industrial
society vs. militant society, just to name
a few. The anti-state liberal tradition in
Europe and the United States continued after
Molinari in the early writings of Herbert
Spencer as well as in thinkers such as Paul
Émile de Puydt and Auberon Herbert. However,
the first person to use the term anarcho-capitalism
was Murray Rothbard, who in the mid-20th century
synthesized elements from the Austrian School
of economics, classical liberalism and 19th-century
American individualist anarchists Lysander
Spooner and Benjamin Tucker (while rejecting
their labor theory of value and the norms
they derived from it). Anarcho-capitalism
advocates the elimination of the state in
favor of individual sovereignty, private property
and free markets. Anarcho-capitalists believe
that in the absence of statute (law by decree
or legislation), society would improve itself
through the discipline of the free market
(or what its proponents describe as a "voluntary
society").In an anarcho-capitalist society,
law enforcement, courts and all other security
services would be operated by privately funded
competitors rather than centrally through
taxation. Money, along with all other goods
and services, would be privately and competitively
provided in an open market. Therefore, personal
and economic activities under anarcho-capitalism
would be regulated by victim-based dispute
resolution organizations under tort and contract
law, rather than by statute through centrally
determined punishment under political monopolies.
A Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist society would
operate under a mutually agreed-upon libertarian
"legal code which would be generally accepted,
and which the courts would pledge themselves
to follow". This pact would recognize self-ownership
and the non-aggression principle (NAP), although
methods of enforcement vary.
== History ==
Isolated strands of liberal thought had existed
in Western philosophy since the Ancient Greeks
and in Eastern philosophy since the Song and
Ming period. These ideas were first drawn
together and systematized as a distinct ideology,
by the English philosopher John Locke, generally
regarded as the father of modern liberalism.
The first major signs of liberal politics
emerged in modern times. These ideas began
to coalesce at the time of the English Civil
Wars. The Levellers, a radical political movement,
during the war called for freedom of religion,
frequent convening of parliament and equality
under the law. 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 what many consider the first
modern, liberal state. The development of
liberalism continued throughout the 18th century
with the burgeoning Enlightenment ideals of
the era. This was a period of profound intellectual
vitality that questioned old traditions and
influenced several European monarchies throughout
the 18th century. Political tension between
England and its American colonies grew after
1765 and the Seven Years' War over the issue
of taxation without representation, culminating
in the Declaration of Independence of a new
republic, and the resulting American Revolutionary
War to defend it. After the war, the leaders
debated about how to move forward. The Articles
of Confederation, written in 1776, now appeared
inadequate to provide security, or even a
functional government. The Confederation Congress
called a Constitutional Convention in 1787,
which resulted in the writing of a new Constitution
of the United States establishing a federal
government. In the context of the times, the
Constitution was a republican and liberal
document. It remains the oldest liberal governing
document in effect worldwide.
In Europe, liberalism has a long tradition
dating back to the 17th century. The French
Revolution began in 1789. The two key events
that marked the triumph of liberalism were
the abolition of feudalism in France on the
night of 4 August 1789, which marked the collapse
of feudal and old traditional rights and privileges
and restrictions as well as the passage of
the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of
the Citizen in August. During the Napoleonic
Wars, the French brought to Western Europe
the liquidation of the feudal system, the
liberalization of property laws, the end of
seigneurial dues, the abolition of guilds,
the legalization of divorce, the disintegration
of Jewish ghettos, the collapse of the Inquisition,
the final end of the Holy Roman Empire, the
elimination of church courts and religious
authority, the establishment of the metric
system and equality under the law for all
men. His most lasting achievement, the Civil
Code, served as "an object of emulation all
over the globe", but it also perpetuated further
discrimination against women under the banner
of the "natural order".The development into
maturity of classical liberalism took place
before and after the French Revolution in
Britain. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations,
published in 1776, was to provide most of
the ideas of economics at least until the
publication of John Stuart Mill's Principles
in 1848. Smith addressed the motivation for
economic activity, the causes of prices and
the distribution of wealth and the policies
the state should follow in order to maximise
wealth. The radical liberal movement began
in the 1790s in England and concentrated on
parliamentary and electoral reform, emphasizing
natural rights and popular sovereignty. Radicals
like Richard Price and Joseph Priestley saw
parliamentary reform as a first step toward
dealing with their many grievances, including
the treatment of Protestant Dissenters, the
slave trade, high prices and high taxes.In
Latin America, liberal unrest dates back to
the 18th century, when liberal agitation in
Latin America led to independence from the
imperial power of Spain and Portugal. The
new regimes were generally liberal in their
political outlook and employed the philosophy
of positivism, which emphasized the truth
of modern science, to buttress their positions.
In the United States, a vicious war ensured
the integrity of the nation and the abolition
of slavery in the South. Historian Don Doyle
has argued that the Union victory in the American
Civil War (1861–1865) gave a major boost
to the course of liberalism.During 19th and
early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire and
Middle East, liberalism influenced periods
of reform such as the Tanzimat and Al-Nahda;
the rise of secularism, constitutionalism
and nationalism; and different intellectuals
and religious group and movements, like the
Young Ottomans and Islamic Modernism. Prominent
of the era were Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, Namık
Kemal and İbrahim Şinasi. However, the reformist
ideas and trends did not reach the common
population successfully as the books, periodicals
and newspapers were accessible primarily to
intellectuals and segments of an emerging
middle class while many Muslims saw them as
foreign influences on the world of Islam.
That perception complicated reformist efforts
made by Middle Eastern states. These changes,
along with other factors, helped to create
a sense of crisis within Islam, which continues
to this day. This led to Islamic revivalism.
Abolitionist and suffrage movements spread,
along with representative and democratic ideals.
France established an enduring republic in
the 1870s. However, nationalism also spread
rapidly after 1815. A mixture of liberal and
nationalist sentiment in Italy and Germany
brought about the unification of the two countries
in the late 19th century. A liberal regime
came to power in Italy and ended the secular
power of the Popes. However, the Vatican launched
a counter crusade against liberalism. Pope
Pius IX issued the Syllabus of Errors in 1864,
condemning liberalism in all its forms. In
many countries, liberal forces responded by
expelling the Jesuit order. By the end of
the nineteenth century, the principles of
classical liberalism were being increasingly
challenged and the ideal of the self-made
individual seemed increasingly implausible.
Victorian writers like Charles Dickens, Thomas
Carlyle and Matthew Arnold were early influential
critics of social injustice.Liberalism gained
momentum in the beginning of the 20th century.
The bastion of autocracy, the Russian Tsar,
was overthrown in the first phase of the Russian
Revolution. The Allied victory in the First
World War and the collapse of four empires
seemed to mark the triumph of liberalism across
the European continent, not just among the
victorious allies, but also in Germany and
the newly created states of Eastern Europe.
Militarism, as typified by Germany, was defeated
and discredited. As Blinkhorn argues, the
liberal themes were ascendant in terms of
"cultural pluralism, religious and ethnic
toleration, national self-determination, free
market economics, representative and responsible
government, free trade, unionism, and the
peaceful settlement of international disputes
through a new body, the League of Nations".
In the Middle East, liberalism led to constitutional
periods, like the Ottoman First and Second
Constitutional Era and the Persian constitutional
period, but it declined in the late 1930s
due the growth and opposition of Islamism
and pan-Arab nationalism. However, there were
various examples of intellectuals who advocated
liberal values and ideas. Prominent liberals
during the period were Taha Hussein, Ahmed
Lutfi el-Sayed, Tawfiq al-Hakim, Abd El-Razzak
El-Sanhuri, Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri and Muhammad
Mandur.
In the United States, modern liberalism traces
its history to the popular presidency of Franklin
D. Roosevelt, who initiated the New Deal in
response to the Great Depression and won an
unprecedented four elections. The New Deal
coalition established by Roosevelt left a
decisive legacy and influenced many future
American presidents, including John F. Kennedy.
Meanwhile, the definitive liberal response
to the Great Depression was given by the British
economist John Maynard Keynes, who had begun
a theoretical work examining the relationship
between unemployment, money and prices back
in the 1920s. The worldwide Great Depression,
starting in 1929, hastened the discrediting
of liberal economics and strengthened calls
for state control over economic affairs. Economic
woes prompted widespread unrest in the European
political world, leading to the rise of fascism
as an ideology and a movement arrayed against
both liberalism and communism, especially
in Nazi Germany and Italy. The rise of fascism
in the 1930s eventually culminated in World
War II, the deadliest conflict in human history.
The Allies prevailed in the war by 1945 and
their victory set the stage for the Cold War
between the Communist Eastern Bloc and the
liberal Western Bloc.
In Iran, liberalism enjoyed wide popularity.
In April 1951, the National Front became the
governing coalition when democratically elected
Mohammad Mosaddegh, a liberal nationalist,
took office as the Prime Minister. However,
his way of governing entered in conflict with
Western interest and he was removed from power
in a coup on 19 August 1953. The coup ended
the dominance of liberalism in the country's
politics.Among the various regional and national
movements, the civil rights movement in the
United States during the 1960s strongly highlighted
the liberal efforts for equal rights. The
Great Society project launched by President
Lyndon B. Johnson oversaw the creation of
Medicare and Medicaid, the establishment of
Head Start and the Job Corps as part of the
War on Poverty and the passage of the landmark
Civil Rights Act of 1964, an altogether rapid
series of events that some historians have
dubbed the "Liberal Hour".
The Cold War featured extensive ideological
competition and several proxy wars, but the
widely feared World War III between the Soviet
Union and the United States never occurred.
While communist states and liberal democracies
competed against one another, an economic
crisis in the 1970s inspired a move away from
Keynesian economics, especially under Margaret
Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald
Reagan in the United States. This trend, called
"neoliberalism" by its opponents, lasted through
the 1980s and the 1990s. Meanwhile, nearing
the end of the 20th century communist states
in Eastern Europe collapsed precipitously,
leaving liberal democracies as the only major
forms of government in the West.
At the beginning of World War II, the number
of democracies around the world was about
the same as it had been forty years before.
After 1945, liberal democracies spread very
quickly, but then retreated. In The Spirit
of Democracy, Larry Diamond argues that by
1974 "dictatorship, not democracy, was the
way of the world" and that "barely a quarter
of independent states chose their governments
through competitive, free, and fair elections".
Diamond goes on to say that democracy bounced
back and by 1995 the world was "predominantly
democratic".
== Criticism and support ==
Liberalism has drawn both criticism and support
in its history from various ideological groups.
Less friendly to the goals of liberalism has
been conservatism. Edmund Burke, considered
by some to be the first major proponent of
modern conservative thought, offered a blistering
critique of the French Revolution by assailing
the liberal pretensions to the power of rationality
and to the natural equality of all humans.Some
confusion remains about the relationship between
social liberalism and socialism, despite the
fact that many variants of socialism distinguish
themselves markedly from liberalism by opposing
capitalism, hierarchy and private property.
Socialism formed as a group of related yet
divergent ideologies in the 19th century such
as Christian socialism, communism (with the
writings of Karl Marx) and social anarchism
(with the writings of Mikhail Bakunin), the
latter two influenced by the Paris Commune.
These ideologies—as with liberalism and
conservatism—fractured into several major
and minor movements in the following decades.
Marx rejected the foundational aspects of
liberal theory, hoping to destroy both the
state and the liberal distinction between
society and the individual while fusing the
two into a collective whole designed to overthrow
the developing capitalist order of the 19th
century. Today, socialist parties and ideas
remain a political force with varying degrees
of power and influence on all continents leading
national governments in many countries.
Vladimir Lenin stated that—in contrast with
Marxism—liberal science defends wage slavery.
However, some proponents of liberalism like
George Henry Evans, Silvio Gesell and Thomas
Paine were critics of wage slavery. One of
the most outspoken critics of liberalism was
the Roman Catholic Church, which resulted
in lengthy power struggles between national
governments and the Church. In the same vein,
conservatives have also attacked what they
perceive to be the reckless liberal pursuit
of progress and material gains, arguing that
such preoccupations undermine traditional
social values rooted in community and continuity.
However, a few variations of conservatism,
like liberal conservativism, expound some
of the same ideas and principles championed
by classical liberalism, including "small
government and thriving capitalism".Social
democracy, an ideology advocating progressive
modification of capitalism, emerged in the
20th century and was influenced by socialism.
Broadly defined as a project that aims to
correct through government reformism what
it regards as the intrinsic defects of capitalism
by reducing inequalities, social democracy
was also not against the state. Several commentators
have noted strong similarities between social
liberalism and social democracy, with one
political scientist even calling American
liberalism "bootleg social democracy" due
to the absence of a significant social democratic
tradition in the United States that liberals
have tried to rectify. Another movement associated
with modern democracy, Christian democracy,
hopes to spread Catholic social ideas and
has gained a large following in some European
nations. The early roots of Christian democracy
developed as a reaction against the industrialisation
and urbanisation associated with laissez-faire
liberalism in the 19th century. Despite these
complex relationships, some scholars have
argued that liberalism actually "rejects ideological
thinking" altogether, largely because such
thinking could lead to unrealistic expectations
for human society.Fascists accuse liberalism
of materialism and a lack of spiritual values.
In particular, fascism opposes liberalism
for its materialism, rationalism, individualism
and utilitarianism. Fascists believe that
the liberal emphasis on individual freedom
produces national divisiveness, but many fascists
agree with liberals in their support of private
property rights and a market economy.Scholars
have praised the influence of liberal internationalism,
claiming that the rise of globalisation "constitutes
a triumph of the liberal vision that first
appeared in the eighteenth century" while
also writing that liberalism is "the only
comprehensive and hopeful vision of world
affairs".
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== References and further reading ==
== External links ==
"Liberalism". An article by the Encyclopædia
Britannica.
Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Liberalism". Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Liberalism at Curlie
"Liberalism/Antiliberalism". A critical survey.
"Guide to Classical Liberal Scholarship".
