Liberalism: Classical, Reform, Contemporary

Liberalism

• Classical Liberalism
  • 1700s-1800s
  • Locke & Smith
• Reform Liberalism
  • 1800s-1900s
  • Mill & Green
• Contemporary Liberalism
  • 1930s-
  • Keynes (1930s) & Rawls (1970s)

Key Ideas

• Personal freedom – freedom from coercion
• Limited government – state serves & performs limited functions
• Equality of right – everyone must abide by laws, which must be applied equally and impartially
• Consent of the governed – government requires the consent of the people and is responsible to them
• Two aspects all the forms of liberalism

What is the best relationship between the two?

• Politics
• Economics
• Question: what relationship between the two?

Classical Liberalism

• John Locke (1632-1704) – England
• Adam Smith (1723-90) – Scotland
• David Hume (1711-76) – Scotland
• Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) – USA
• James Madison (1751-1836) – USA

Classical Liberalism: John Locke

• Basis of political ideas of liberalism
• Radical for his time (now considered conservative)
  • Rejecting absolutist monarchy
  • Replacing it with a recognition of the rights of the individual
  • People’s consent to who rules over them

Historical situation

• Civil War in England
• King Charles I going to war with Parliament
• Key debate: what should be the foundation of political authority:
  • Divine right of kings: God is said to have anointed that monarch to rule
  • Popular sovereignty: people’s consent. He was against the idea of Devine right(kings rule)

Key Books:

• Concern: to defeat the idea of kings having a divine right to rule over subjects
• Two Treatises of Government, 1684 ; his idea is no single person is been chosen by god to control everyone
• First Treatise (On Government) – Nobody has been singled out by God to hold any natural authority over anybody else = no divine right granted to kings
• Second Treatise (On Government) – Establish the true basis for political authority or government
  • Key document in the development of liberalism

Ideas:

• People as autonomous “individuals” – individuals are most important
• State of nature: life before government = free, equal, governed by the law of nature
  • Natural rights: “life, liberty, and estate” — granted by God; everyone has them
  • People are self-interested (hallmark of liberal thought)
  • We are protected by nature
• State of war: state of enmity and destruction
  • All individuals, being self-interested, agree together to form a political society
  • We need a government that will make, interpret, and enforce laws; a government that will save us from war and make life possible
• Social contract (compact)
  • Government is founded on the consent of people
  • Can consent only to create and obey a limited (not absolute) government – otherwise they would be enslaving themselves, which violates their natural rights
• Government: people create for a specific end = to protect their natural rights
• “Property”:
  • Their lives, their bodies, their liberty, their possessions
  • The government’s authority is limited to protecting this
  • Unequal property is a matter of right
  • “labour theory of property” = mixing of your labour with something makes it your property
• Right of revolution: a returning to the starting point if government is violating your natural rights
• Political obligation = individuals who form this contract are obligated to obey the law of a rightly formed government
  • If an individual hasn’t consented, not obligated to obey the laws
  • Equality of law: everyone must be treated equally before the law
• Tolerance: people should tolerate each others’ religions – state should not be mixed in with religion
  • Beginnings of secularism – there is no state religion

Classical Liberalism: Adam Smith

• Basis of economic ideas of liberalism
  • Heavily influenced American intellectuals
  • Goal: separate politics from economics
  • Modern torch-bearers: Hayek & Friedman
• Key Books:
  • Theory of Moral Sentiments
  • Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations
• Ideas
  • “Propensity to truck and barter” = humans are naturally traders & consumers
  • Capitalism: some people own land or factories, other people work the land and factories=efficiency by each doing what they are good at doing(David Ricardo)
  • “Invisible hand”: individuals pursuing their own self-interest will frequently create benefits for all individuals, that is, society
  • Free-market economy: independent, free competition in the economy and marketplace
    • Anne-Robert Turgot: laissez-faire
    • Free trade: no taxes or barriers to trade
  • Government has no role in the economy & society, except as the “nightwatchman state”:
    • 1. Protect society and provide security
    • 2. Administer justice to prevent individuals from individuals
    • 3. Create & maintain public works, and create public institutions where it is not profitable for the market to provide a good or service
  • Opposed redistribution = inequality is inevitable but acceptable if resulting from free-market economy’s operation

Classical liberalism summed up

• This is the historical and philosophical basis of modern version
• Know the key ideas and assumption there important

Reform Liberalism

• James Mill
• John Stuart Mill
• T.H. Green

Reform Liberalism: John Stuart Mill

• Influenced
  • classical liberals
  • reform or welfare liberals
  • some socialists
  • conservative libertarians
  • some market conservatives
  • liberal feminists (wrote The Subjection of Women [against subjection])
  • Modern torch-bearer: Keynes
• Political economist = economics & politics are intermixed
• Historical situation
  • Industrial Revolution in England: 1750s
    • People increasingly working in factories
    • Working class people not living well, awful conditions, death, etc.
  • The rise of mass society
• Key Books
  • On Liberty
  • Subjection of Women
  • Autobiography
• Ideas
  • Utilitarian = the greatest happiness of the greatest number
  • Lived with Harriet Taylor in 1830, hastened his recovery
  • Individual’s relationship to society
    • Harm Principle: society cannot legitimately coerce or interfere with individuals except if they are harming others
    • Duties to society
    • 1. Not to injure certain interests of another that legal or tacit conventions understand
    • 2. Bear a share of sacrifices and labours incurred for defending society.
  • “Liberty” (like freedom) = three types:
    • 1. Of thought, conscience, speech
    • 2. Habit, taste, pursuits
    • 3. Of assembly, uniting for any purpose that doesn’t harm others
  • Freedom in speech & though is crucial:
    • 1. Opinions society holds may be false
    • 2. Need free flow of all opinions because although society’s received opinion may be true, it will lapse into dogma if not regularly challenged
    • 3. Unorthodox opinion may supply the remainder of the truth to a prevailing view
  • Liberty is important because:
    • 1. Mill argues protecting individual liberty contributes to the human race’s happiness & progress (utilitarian)
    • 2. For the individual, essential to personal development
  • Democracy = Right to vote & expanding the vote( the right to choose our beliefs)
    • Argued for women’s right to vote (for the good of their families and in accordance to their husbands)

Reform Liberalism: Thomas Hill Green

• Ideas
  • Negative freedom: freedom from the constraints of smothering laws, customs, social opinions
  • Positive freedom: freedom to live as one chooses to develop oneself & seek happiness
    • The capitalist economy has some ugly consequences
    • State must offset these consequences
    • Society, acting through government, should establish public schools and hospitals, aid the needy
    • Regulate working conditions to promote workers’ health and well-being
    • Only then will the disadvantaged individuals in society become truly free
  • Humans are self-interested, BUT self-interest doesn’t mean short-term, immediate pleasure – the common good is in everyone’s personal best interest
  • Individuals relationship to society individuals should have a private sphere separate from the public sphere
• Redistribution = necessary(when people have those things people are less likely to get involved in violence etc.)
  • Welfare State: government helps those in need of assistance – shelter, food, clothing, education, etc.
  • Taxes – progressive: make more money/income, pay more taxes
  • Equality of opportunity = everyone should have opportunities available to them regardless of differences

Contemporary Liberalism: State and Economy

• Also known as Welfare Liberals
• Ideas:
  • Capitalism is good but has some problems
    • 1. Includes economic activities that harm the broader society
    • 2. Capitalism can’t serve public goods & society must create them collectively
    • 3. Capitalism creates inequalities in power, wealth – not democratic
    • 4. Capitalism is racked with fluctuating business cycles:
  • Need state involvement in the economy: “mixed economy”
  • Need to deal with powerful corporations and their oligopolies & monopolies (interfere in the marketplace, not to restrict competition, but to keep the large corporations from restricting competition(monopolies) and harming society)

Contemporary Liberalism: John Maynard Keynes

• Basis of economic ideas of contemporary liberalism
  • Heavily influenced Canadian and European economic intellectuals
• Key Books: General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
• Government needs to deal with problems of capitalist economic cycles – booms & bust, etc.
  • Fiscal policy = government spending
  • Monetary policy = controlling interest rates & money supply
  • Counter-cyclical action:
    • Economy up = collect more taxes & raise interest rates & not spend
    • Economy down = lower taxes & lower interest rates & spend
    • “Pump & prime”: government should spend to jump start the economy when it goes down
• His ideas were instituted in Britain
  • Note for next class: this is also where classical liberalism made its revival as “neo-conservatism” or “neo-classical liberalism”

Contemporary Liberalism: John Rawls

• Basis of political ideas of contemporary liberalism
• Key book: Theory of Justice
• Rawls: a “just society” would distribute wealth, income and other primary social goods equally
  • Exceptions allowed if the unequal distribution benefited the society, especially the least well off
• His two principles of justice:
  • 1. “Each person has an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all”
    • Include rights, liberties, opportunities, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect – social primary goods
  • 2. “Social and economic inequalities are to meet two conditions: They must be:”
    • (a) To the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged
    • Meaning: the people the least well off have to be most benefited by any inequalities
    • Who are the least advantaged? Those disadvantaged by family and class origins, natural endowments, or fortune and luck
    • (b) Attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair opportunity
    • Meaning: everyone has to have the same shot at any of the positions that not everyone gets to hold
• A just society:
  • To meet people’s basic needs, so they can develop themselves as just people
  • However: they are responsible for their preferences, once these basic needs and rights are met

Liberalism & Our Criteria

• Human Nature
  • Individual = focus
  • Self-interested
  • Naturally free, equal, rational
• Nature of Society
  • Collection of individuals who have agreed to live together
  • Community is not more important than the individual
• Conception of Freedom
  • Classical: negative – freedom from interference
  • Reform/Contemporary: positive – freedom to develop, progress & be happy
• Understanding of Justice
  • Both = protection of individual’s life, liberty & estate
  • Classical: equality before the law
  • Reform/Contemporary: equality of opportunity
• Conception of the State/Government
  • Classical: limited to very few function
  • Reform/Contemporary: can create and enforce laws that protect our lives, liberty and freedom, but nothing more
• Other approaches also intersect with liberalism
  • Race liberalism = Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Feminist liberalism = Susan Moller Okin