Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (4 page)

But there also are liberal frames of mind, liberal patterns of thinking that operate in the world of political discourse, language, and disputation. Philosophers, political theorists, historians of ideas, practising politicians, and political parties all weigh in with their disparate models, objectives, critiques, and certainties. As a set of guiding principles for leading the good life, liberalism is frequently understood by philosophers and ethicists to be a binding set of virtues and precepts that deserves universal standing. So while Fukuyama regarded liberalism as a universal ideology, which it plainly is not, a number of political theorists nonetheless hold that liberalism is a philosophical and ethical imperative that ought to be universal: the highest expression of norms of social morality and justice. For them it exists as a general set of ideals appropriate for all right-thinking individuals, regardless of whether or not it is realized in actuality. In sum, for many, liberalism is a label keenly pursued and, when attained, staunchly defended. Its supporters bask in the light of the term; its detractors pour scorn on its unworldliness or hypocrisy.

A plethora of particular liberalisms

There is another issue at stake. Liberalism originated out of a European set of beliefs, but it does not have an agreed meaning, even on that one continent. Within Europe its reputation, and the connotations it arouses, have located it on very different points of the political spectrum: left of centre in the United Kingdom, right of centre in France and Germany. In Scandinavian countries, particularly in Sweden, many liberal ideas have been disseminated under the heading of social-democracy, while what is labelled as liberalism there has frequently been linked to elitist or middle class individualism. In much of Europe and beyond, socialists of all stripes have accused liberalism of acting against the interests of the working classes and of furthering anti-social selfishness, defying the message of inclusiveness that many liberals wish to spread. In Eastern Europe since the fall of communism in 1989 liberalism has been seen to offer protection from the intrusiveness of states and to provide a sanctuary within civil society for those fleeing from centralization. But other East Europeans see it as holding out the delectable fruits of a market-driven prosperity that their societies had been denied by their past ideological and political systems. Liberalism is also the target of misrecognition and ambivalence. In the United States it is seen as a supporter of big government and human rights, or conversely as the enfeebling gospel of the nanny-state. In some highly religious societies, liberalism is tantamount to heresy, falsely deeming human beings, not God, as the measure of all things, elevating the secular hubris of individual preferences above the divine will.

All this is hardly surprising, for a doctrine with such a high profile is bound to attract heavy criticism and suspicion in the course of its history. There are those who condemn liberalism as an officious, hazardous, and enervating doctrine under whose banner both social and personal harm have been inflicted. Many poststructuralists have accused liberals of fostering false ideals of harmony and cooperation, and of being damagingly individualist. Some of its cultural opponents fault it for setting itself up over accumulated and traditional social wisdom. It has been denounced as a manifesto for capitalism, however caring. It has been repudiated as a Western cluster of ideas that seeks to replace or subjugate other culturally significant understandings of social life, offering a cover not merely for large-scale exploitation inside Europe but—no less perturbingly—for the former colonial policies in Europe’s ex-colonies. It has been castigated as a doctrine that has failed to give women their proper social due; derided as an exaggerated view of the rationality of human conduct at the expense of both emotion and passion; or disparaged as a rosy-eyed theory of artificial consensus that papers over the vitalizing diversities and discontinuities among human beings.

In sum, liberalism has been adopted by truth-seekers, endorsed by humanists, campaigned for by reformers, cast aside by rival ideologies, deliberately misappropriated by those who wish to disguise their real political intentions, and attacked by those who regard it as a self-deluding smoke screen for anti-social conduct. In its multiple guises, liberalism has been, at the same time, something to be proud of and something to censure and bemoan. Yet, when all is said and done, liberalism is one of the most central and pervasive political theories and ideologies. Its history carries a crucial heritage of civilized thinking, of political practice, and of philosophical-ethical creativity. In the course of its emergence its diverse currents have borne some of the most important achievements of the human spirit. Without liberalism one could not conceive of the modern state. The state liberals had in mind was one that places the good of individuals before that of rulers; that recognizes both the limits and the possibilities of government; that enables the market exchanges that are necessary to proper standards of living; that justifies the holding of private property beneficial to individual prosperity; that releases individuals from burdensome hindrances to their freedom and flourishing; and that respects the law and constitutional arrangements. Without liberal conceptions of human dignity, it would be difficult to imagine, let alone sustain, personal originality and uniqueness. But liberalism has achieved more than that. In its more recent history it has also upheld the concern for the plight and welfare of others, and it has insisted on sensitivity to social differences within societies.

The sounds of liberalism: an initial sampling

Let’s listen to some liberal voices over the past two centuries, since it became a recognizable set of political principles, as well as a powerful ideology. First there are the enthusiastic voices:

Liberalism … begins with the recognition that men, do what they will, are free; that a man’s acts are his own, spring from his own personality, and cannot be coerced. (R.G. Collingwood)

Liberals regard as sacred the right of everyone, however humble, odd, or inarticulate, to criticize the government. (Leo Strauss)

The word liberal is a word primarily of political import, but its political meaning defines itself by the quality of life it envisages, by the sentiments it desires to affirm. (Lionel Trilling)

Liberalism is an all-penetrating element of the life-structure of the modern world …Liberalism is the belief that society can safely be founded on this self-directing power of personality, that it is only on this foundation that a true community can be built. (L.T. Hobhouse)

Then there are the critical voices. In one version, liberals are class-based exploiters of the advantages of the market. ‘The practice of this energetic bourgeois liberalism’, wrote Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, referring to French and German middle class interests around the time of the French Revolution, ‘showed itself …in shameless bourgeois profit-making’. In another version, liberals transform politics into an arena of disruptive competition and discord, instead of a search for solidarity and unity. Thus the post-Marxist philosopher Chantal Mouffe wrote that ‘Liberalism simply transposes into the public realm the diversity of interests already existing in society and reduces the political moment to the process of negotiation among interests.’ Many American conservatives employ liberalism as a pejorative term, and relate it to an over-interventionist and heavily spending government, or to an exaggerated concern with the rights of minorities and the marginalized at the expense of responsible citizens, who should not have to carry the burden of other people’s failings. The American conservative writer, Russell Kirk, complained that ‘the present-day liberal, become an advocate of the tyranny of the state in every field, offers as an apology his intention of freeing the people’.

Finally we have the voices of professional political theorists and philosophers. It is within this group that liberalism is predominantly regarded as a theory of justice and public virtue. As the philosopher John Rawls expressed it: ‘The content of a liberal political conception of justice has three main elements: a list of equal basic rights and liberties, a priority for those freedoms, and an assurance that all members of society have adequate all-purpose means to make use of these rights and liberties.’ Another version is that of the scholar of jurisprudence Ronald Dworkin, who from a legal-moral perspective defined liberalism as consisting of a particular theory of equality, whereby citizens are treated as equal by insisting ‘that government must be neutral on what might be called the question of the good life’. The assumption here is that an individual is the best choice exerciser for her or his own life and that governments should steer clear of dictating moral options in the private sphere.

Liberalism as history, ideology, and philosophy

There are three ways of handling the variety of encounters with liberalism. We could do what many have done and still do: plump for one of the characterizations of liberalism as correct while dismissing the others without much ado as false or mistaken. Whatever we think of such a truth-seeking perspective, it does not allow for flexibility or pluralism in approaching liberalism. Instead, we could try to identify the most typical, or most common, of the liberal variants and appoint it as the benchmark for what is meant by liberalism. We then run the risk that its supporters might misrecognize what they believe liberalism is, and we might sacrifice the subtlety and quality of which liberal ideas are capable by subjecting it to the changing views of majorities. Alternatively, we could offer a map on which to place, locate, and trace the features of different liberalisms, both shared and distinct. Such a map might enable us to comprehend how various liberalisms are cobbled together. With this map in hand, we could assess the contributions and shortcomings of key liberal variants while appreciating the range and power of liberalism as a whole. That will be the method advanced here. The following chapters will analyse the selective preferences people display in their accounts of liberalism, without necessarily endorsing any of them. But, as will be noted in
Chapter 7
, we also need to be alert to the eventuality that liberal positions are often misappropriated.

Liberals have always seen themselves as part of a tradition of thinking about the relationship between individual and society, and they can claim an impressive pedigree in advocates of natural rights and tolerance such as John Locke (1632–1704) and champions of liberty such as John Stuart Mill (1806–73). Consequently, one well-established method of investigating liberalism approaches it as a historical story about how individuals and societies progress. ‘Progress’ is the operative word here, as the underlying assumption is that the liberal project entails the continuous improvement and refinement of the human condition, in the course of a gradual and steady process. But whereas liberals have their own unequivocal narratives about the path travelled by liberalism, scholars of liberalism may give rival and rather different accounts of what they think happened on that journey. They may disagree sharply over what the main liberal ideas and the key liberal innovations are. They may differ on whether liberalism peaked in a particular era or not; whether it has weakened as a viable theory or become increasingly resourceful; whether it has betrayed its roots or has strengthened them. Liberalism has changed unevenly in the course of its history. It has accrued various layers of argument over time that have loosely added to its characteristics. Anticipating the discussion in
Chapter 3
, we can provisionally suggest that liberalism has consisted historically of five temporal layers (see
Box 1
).

Some of those layers have also disappeared or been overshadowed in several cases. At any point a different layer may be ascendant or in decline and, as a consequence, remarkably diverse conclusions can be reached concerning how liberalism has navigated among them.

Box 1 The temporal layers of liberalism

1. A theory of restrained power aimed at protecting individual rights and securing the space in which people can live without governmental oppression

2. A theory of economic interactions and free markets enabling individuals to benefit from the mutual exchange of goods.

3. A theory of human progress over time intended to enable individuals to develop their potential and capacities as long as they do not harm others.

4. A theory of mutual interdependence and state-regulated welfare that is necessary for individuals to achieve both liberty and flourishing.

5. A theory that recognizes the diversity of group life-styles and beliefs and aims for a plural and tolerant society.

But liberalism, as already mentioned, is also an ideology competing over space in a crowded ideological world. That means that it displays all the characteristics ideologies have in common, as an action-oriented set of ideas, beliefs, and values that exhibit a recurring pattern. Ideologies aim to justify, contest, or change the social and political arrangements of a political community. Liberalism, too, campaigns to control public policy and political language in that manner, but it is of course only one ideology among many, and it has had, and still needs, to struggle for recognition and influence.

On a third dimension, liberalism constitutes a philosophical view of the world, attempting to establish the principles of the good life that all reasonable human beings ought to adopt. In that sense it positions itself above the political fray, setting out the true and unified ethical standards that civilized societies everywhere should, upon reflection, maintain. Such philosophical viewpoints only occasionally take into account the actual temporal and cultural constraints that render the realization of those ideals very problematic. Nonetheless, the elaboration of liberal philosophical principles has been at the heart of recent political philosophy, and we will accordingly devote space to exploring those arguments in
Chapter 6
.