Liberalism: Outline

1. Liberalism: Outline • Varieties of Liberalism • historical circumstances • conceptions of freedom • four functions of ideology • Welfare-state Liberalism and Socialism • Liberal democracy

2. What is Liberalism? • When you hear someone is a liberal, or a particular proposal or policy is liberal, what do you think this means? • Think general principles • A liberal ______ (person/politician, proposal, policy, and so forth) is: • ___________________________ • ___________________________ • ___________________________

3. A liberal is… • Inclined toward reducing role of government • Tolerant toward unusual, deviant persons, actions • Concerned with protecting rights of unpopular minorities

4. Liberal policies… • Higher taxes  social welfare • Against restricting freedom of expression, action (e.g., abortion, smoking marijuana) • Protecting rights of defendants in criminal cases • Restricting power of police to gather evidence, extract confessions

5. Liberal? • Yes and No • Classical liberals (e.g., John Stuart Mill) and modern libertarians • oppose governmental intrusion into private sphere • Modern welfare, welfare-state, or reform liberals • favor state intervention

6. Liberalism defined • Derived from Latin word liber, meaning “free” • Championed freedom of individual from unjustified, unnecessary restrictions or restraints • Middle Ages = religious worship and economic activity

7. Rise of Liberalism • Demise of feudalism • Increasing trade, commerce • Merchant capitalist  break down barriers to trade • Protestant Reformation  papal, priestly power • Individualism, new ideas • Individual sovereign, endowed with natural rights, life and liberty • State should serve individual, not other way around • Liberal revolutions of 17th and 18th = England, 13 colonies, France

8. Worry of Critics • How can order be maintained in a society whose members are freed from traditional religious and economic restraints? • Would not such “masterless men” ride roughshod over each other? • If older restraints no longer sufficed, what was their substitute?

9. Thomas Hobbes • Leviathan (1651) • Perfect liberty = “state of nature”  grave danger, insecurity • Life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” • To bring solitary individuals into civil relations of cooperation, harmony required agreement – compact, social contract

10. John Locke • Social contract only means by which individual liberty and social order could be reconciled • Specify rights of individuals • Limit government’s right to restrict actions and activities of citizens

11. Individualism • Hobbes and Locke agreed civil society rests on consent of rational, self-interested individuals concerned with protecting lives and property • Defenders of individualism • Individual sovereign ruler of his/her own person  core of Liberalism • Freedom viewed through individualist lenses

12. Primacy of liberty • Locke = every person possesses right to “life, liberty and property” • Jefferson (Declaration of Independence) = “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” • Primacy of liberty; second only to life • Model of freedom as triadic relation • (A) agent • (B) barrier or obstacle • (C) aim or goal

13. Agent • Individual • Not class, caste, rank, or order to which he/she belongs • Isolated, self-governing sovereign • Freedom = absence of restrictions • Unencumbered by obstacles or barriers

14. Barriers or Obstacles • Restrictions, limitations (laws, rules, regulations, restrictive customs, traditions) that arbitrarily inhibit, impede, limit, or hinder actions, movements, choices of individuals, particularly in private or personal sphere of thought and conduct • Sharp distinction between public and private spheres • Sphere of private belief (especially religion) liberty absolute • State has neither right nor authority to tell citizens what to believe, how to worship

15. Goals or Aims • Various – freedom of religion, travel/emigrate, vote, run for public office • Rights of individuals to pursue their goals • Pursuing and promoting one’s self-interest • Free of feudal ties and other restrictions, most individuals “naturally ” promote own well-being • pursue “right to life, liberty, and property” • Two social institutions to protect and promote rights – Free market and Liberal state

16. Free Market • Individuals pursue interests in competition with others • Pre-liberal moral codes condemned self-interested behavior as sinful, unjust • Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith believed “selfish” behavior rational and socially beneficial • “Private vices” (Mandeville) have way of becoming “public benefits” in long run • Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776) • “Invisible hand” of market • natural “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange”

17. The State • “More visible hand” • Scope and power should be minimal, severely limited  restricts freedom of citizens • “that state governs best which governs least” • Role limited to making, enforcing laws needed to promote public and private dealings (e.g., contracts) • Protect individual rights • Act where free market does not, cannot

18. Two sides of Liberalism • Liberalism (late 19th and 20th centuries) • Disagreement about how much “free market” can achieve, how well it can provide socially necessary services • Two sides of Liberalism – economic and ethical – in tension