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Liberalism
does not lend itself to easy definition. A major difficulty is that, with some
exceptions, liberals have shunned dogma, preferring generally a pragmatic to a
doctrinaire approach to social problems. Another, which has been a prolific
source of misunderstanding, has been liberals' own frequently opposing views
concerning the scope of government. The confusion thus engendered is sometimes
compounded by a tendency to identify liberalism exclusively with its 18th- and
19th-century variant, or with the program of this or that liberal party, in a
formulation that has on occasion led many to announce the "decline"
or "end" of liberalism and to compose obituaries that have been
quite misleading. Through the centuries liberalism has changed drastically in
content, but it has maintained a constant form. Those who note the first and
neglect the second understandably find the term confusing and its application
inconsistent.
Liberalism is the culmination of a
development that goes back to the Hebrew prophets, the teachings of the
pre-Socratic philosophers, and the Sermon on the Mount, from all of which
there emerged a sense of the importance of human individuality,
a liberation of the individual from complete subservience to the group, and a
relaxation of the tight hold of custom, law, and authority.
Throughout much of his history, man as
an individual has been submerged in his group. His emancipation as an
individual can be understood as a unique achievement of Western culture,
perhaps its very hallmark. If this be so, then the emergence of liberalism
was, in an important sense, inseparable from Western man's quest for freedom;
for liberalism, in the broadest sense, seeks to protect the individual from
arbitrary external restraints that prevent the full realization of his
potentialities.
Medieval society did not provide a
soil in which the first seeds of liberalism might easily germinate. The Middle
Ages produced a society of status in which the rights and responsibilities of
the individual were determined by his place in a stratified, hierarchically
ordered system. Such a closed, authoritarian order, however grandiose in
outline and noble in aspiration, was bound to place great stress upon
acquiescence and conformity. As new needs and interests, generated by the slow
commercialization and urbanization of Europe, gained strength, the medieval
system was modified to accommodate the ambitions of national rulers and the
requirements of an expanding industry and commerce. The ensuing policies and
arrangements came to be known as mercantilism,
a policy of state intervention that, in theory at least, might be extended to
regulation of the most minute details of economic life (cf.
Eli Heckscher, Mercantilism, 1935).
However, as such intervention came more and more to serve established
interests and to inhibit enterprise, it was challenged by the members of the
newly emerging middle class. The challenge took the form of revolt, first
against the Universal Church, and later against mercantilist states, presided
over by absolute monarchs. The former manifested itself in the Protestant
Reformation and the quest of Calvinists and Calvinist sects for freedom of
conscience; the latter in the great revolutions that rocked England and France
in the 17th and 18th centuries, notably the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the
French Revolution a century later, and the successful revolt of England's
American colonies. Classical liberalism as an articulated creed is a product
of those great collisions.
The fortunes of liberalism differ with
the historical conditions in each country--with the strength of the crown, the
élan of the aristocracy, the pace of industrialization, and the
circumstances of national unification. Thus, by contrast with England, the
character of liberalism in France reflected the decadence of its nobility and
the absolutism of the Bourbons. The failure of liberalism in Germany in the
19th century was attributable in great part to the dominant role of a
militarized and Lutheran Prussia and the reactionary influence of Austria. The
advent of liberalism in Italy was delayed by the armies of Austria and of
Louis-Napoleon and the opposition of the Vatican. Whatever the variations, the
liberal impact on authoritarianism reverberated throughout Europe and its
dominions, voiced by a Kossuth in Hungary, a Mazzini in Italy, a Thorbecke in
The Netherlands, a Bolívar in South America. For a moment even Russia,
in 1905 and again between March and November in 1917, heard the echo and, had
there been a sufficiently numerous middle class to listen, the course of
modern history would no doubt have been changed.
The authors of the liberal creed
differ widely, even in the countries in which liberalism was cradled. But
their agreements sufficiently exceed their differences to permit their being
included in the same tradition--a tradition whose main manifestations are both
economic and political. The fact that the classical liberals, perhaps more
perceptively than their successors, regarded these as only abstractly
separable is indicated in the very title of their science--political economy.
On the economic side 18th- and
19th-century liberalism based itself on the sovereignty of the market
and the "natural harmony of interests." On this view, if individuals
are left free to pursue their self-interest in an exchange economy based upon
a division of labour, the welfare of the group as a whole will necessarily be
enhanced. Classical liberal economists describe a self-adjusting market
mechanism free from all teleological influences. While moral goals are invoked
and ethical criteria presupposed in passing ultimate judgment on the system,
they play no part in determining the sequence of events within it. The one
propelling force is the selfishness of the individual, which becomes harnessed
to the public good because in an exchange economy he must serve others in
order to serve himself. It is only in a free
market, however, that this happy consequence can ensue; any other
arrangement must lead to regimentation, exploitation, and economic stagnation.
The most celebrated formulation of this doctrine is to be found in Adam
Smith's Wealth
of Nations: (see also economic
theory )
He generally, indeed, neither intends
to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. . . .
by directing . . . industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the
greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many
other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of
his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part
of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society
more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known
much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an
affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need
be employed in dissuading them from it.
The same thought had been expressed
more tersely by Bernard de Mandeville (c.
1670-1733) in the phrase, "private vices publick benefits." A
poet (Pope) said it best:
Thus God and Nature link'd the
gen'ral frame,
And bade Self-love and Social be the
same.
Every economic system must be
concerned with at least two basic problems: first, arrangement must somehow be
made for determining what shall be
produced--i.e., how "scarce
means" shall be allocated--and, second, there must be some way of
apportioning what is produced. In a controlled economy this is accomplished by
a planning agency acting at the behest of the government. In the economy
envisaged by the classical economists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and
those conservative economists who today may be called neoclassicists, this is
accomplished in the free market through the price
mechanism. In such a market the theoretically free choices of individual
buyers and sellers determine how the resources of society (labour, goods,
capital) shall be employed. These choices manifest themselves in bids and
offers that in their totality determine the price at which a commodity will
sell. Theoretically, when the demand for a commodity is great, prices will
rise, making it profitable for producers to increase the supply; as supply
approximates demand, prices will tend to fall until producers divert
productive resources to other uses. In this way the closest possible
coincidence is said to be achieved between what is wanted and what is
produced. Moreover, in the distribution of the wealth thereby produced, the
system is asserted to assure a reward in proportion to merit. The assumption
is that in a freely competitive economy in which no one is barred by status
from engaging in economic activity, the income received from such activity is
a fair measure of its value to society. (see also supply
and demand)
Presupposed in the foregoing is a
conception of man as an economic animal rationally engaged in minimizing costs
and maximizing gains (wages, profit, interest). Egoistic and hedonistic
assumptions about human nature, which were taken for granted, led easily to an
emphasis on man as a forward-looking and end-seeking creature. "When
matters of such importance as pain and pleasure are at stake . . . who is
there that does not calculate," Bentham asked. In Pope's descriptive
couplet, although
Self-love, the spring of motion, acts
the soul;
Reason's comparing balance rules the
whole.
If, as the Enlightenment liberals
assumed, "reason's comparing balance" rarely fails man in any of his
activities (Bentham went so far as to construct an entire theory of penology
based on the assumption that even would-be lawbreakers carefully balance the
pleasure to be derived from their contemplated crime against the pain of
punishment), it could be affirmed a
fortiori that they would also meticulously balance utilities against costs
at the marketplace. Since rational men best know their own interest, it must
follow that interference by agencies of government could only diminish that
"greatest happiness of the greatest number" that the followers of
Bentham claimed to desire.
Assumed also by the classical creed is
a conception of the consumer as sovereign, decreeing by his purchases how the
resources of society shall be allocated. No one has celebrated this coronation
of the consumer more eloquently than Ludwig
von Mises in his Omnipotent Government:
Within the market society the working
of the price mechanism makes the consumers supreme. They determine through the
prices they pay and through the amount of their purchases both the quantity
and quality of production. They determine directly the prices of consumers'
goods, and thereby indirectly the price of all material factors of production
and the wages of all hands employed.
. . . In that endless rotating
mechanism [i.e., a market society]
the entrepreneurs and capitalists are the servants of the consumers. The
consumers are the masters, to whose whims the entrepreneurs and capitalists
must adjust their investments and methods of production. The market chooses
the entrepreneurs and the capitalists and removes them as soon as they prove
failures. The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote
and where voting is repeated every day.
Implied by the logic of this economic
creed is a functional justification of private property, often buttressed, to
be sure, by a doctrine of natural right to shield manifestly functionless
claims to property. John Locke's Two
Treatises of Government (1690) pointed the way by defining property as
"whatsoever . . . [man] hath mixed his labour with. . . ." Adam
Smith found that "The property which
every man has in his own labour . . . is the original foundation of all
property. . . ." And Bentham noted that "It is this right that has
overcome the natural aversion to labour. . . ." Since acquisitiveness and
indolence were regarded as inborn and ineradicable human traits, security of
property had to be preserved if incentive was not to be destroyed and the
production of goods discouraged. Both French revolutionaries and English
gentry could be rallied to such a defense of property; and the American
Constitution as well as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen, both of them liberal testaments, charge government with basic
responsibility for its protection.
On the political side the guiding
principle of historical liberalism has been an undeviating insistence on
limiting the power of government. Inspired by the need to remove the state
from destructive interference with the economic life of the community, the
principle degenerated, under the influence of men like Herbert Spencer, into a
doctrinaire form of antistatism. Spencer would even forbid government, either
local or national, to assume responsibility for the paving, lighting, and
sanitation of cities. Even the less doctrinaire Bentham's sole advice to the
state was to "Be quiet," and Edmund Burke--who in this context must
be reckoned a liberal--declared that "It is in the power of the state to
prevent much evil; it can do very little positive good. . . ." Thomas
Paine, eloquent pamphleteer for the American Revolution (of which Burke
approved), wrote in his "Common Sense" that "Government, even
in its best state, is but a necessary evil. . . ," and generations of
Americans almost ritualistically repeated Thomas Jefferson's advice that that
government is best that governs least. (see also political system)
The prevailing view was perhaps best
spelled out in Adam Smith's enumeration of government functions. Smith
assigned the "sovereign" three tasks: to protect the group from
outside violence; to protect individual members of society from the injustices
or oppressions of their fellow citizens; and, finally, to erect and maintain
"those public institutions and those public works, which, though they may
be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are however of such
a nature, that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual, or
small number of individuals. . . ." An agenda more faithful to Adam
Smith's intent would provide a central place for the enforcement of contracts,
without which voluntary individual arrangements could hardly replace
government fiat in the conduct of economic affairs.
In general, liberals believed that
government must not do for the individual what he is able to do for himself.
Legislation like Britain's Ten Hours Act (1847), which limited the labour of
women and children to 58 hours a week, was denounced by the English jurist A.V.
Dicey as late as 1905 as socialistic. Criticizing the Adulteration of
Food or Drink Act and the Sale of Food and Drugs Act of 1899, he contended
that such laws safeguard individuals from mistakes "which often may be
avoided by a man's own care and sagacity" and therefore "rest upon
the idea . . . that the State is a better judge than a man himself of his own
interest . . ." (Law and Public
Opinion in England, 2nd ed.; 1914; pp. 237-238; 263-264). Such views were
even more prevalent in the United States.
The institutional devices by means of
which liberals sought to limit government to the exercise of its proper
functions were numerous: federalism (though not in France and Britain),
bicameralism, the separation of powers. The
last of these, that is, the distribution of power among such functionally
differentiated agencies of government as the legislature, the executive, and
the judiciary, and the system of checks and balances by which it was
accomplished, was given its classic embodiment in the U.S. Constitution and
its political justification in that brilliant apology for the Constitution The
Federalist (1787-88), by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. Montesquieu
had already formulated such a doctrine in his famous De
l'esprit des loix (1748; Eng. trans., The
Spirit of Laws, 1750), receiving the idea from Locke, who had not
developed it fully. (see also Constitution
of the United States of America )
Such a separation of powers could have
been achieved, of course, through a "mixed constitution," that is,
by having a monarch, a hereditary chamber, and an elected assembly share in
power with some appropriate differentiation of function. The Greek historian
Polybius hailed such a mixed government as the glory of the Roman
constitution, and Blackstone (misled perhaps by Montesquieu) in his famous Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69) extolled its
embodiment in the constitution of England, as Burke was to do later with
greater eloquence. But it was precisely despotic kings and functionless
aristocrats (more functionless in France than in England) who thwarted the
interests and ambitions of the middle class, which turned, therefore, to the
principle of majoritarianism.
The greatest check on government is,
of course, the threat of dismissal by its constituents. But in determining the
crucial question of who the constituents are to be, classical liberalism fell
victim to an ambivalence, torn between the great emancipating tendencies
generated by the revolutions with which it was associated and middle-class
fears that democracy would undermine private
property. Most 18th- and 19th-century liberal spokesmen feared popular
sovereignty, and for a long time suffrage was
limited to property owners. In Britain even the important Reform Act of 1867
did not completely abolish property qualifications. France, for her part, bore
revolutionaries but suckled reactionaries: although the Revolution of 1789
proclaimed the ideal of universal manhood suffrage and the Revolution of 1830
reaffirmed it, there were no more than some 200,000 qualified voters in a
population of about 30,000,000 during the reign of Louis-Philippe,
"citizen king" installed by the ascendant bourgeoisie in 1830. And,
in the United States, Jefferson's brave language in the Declaration of
Independence notwithstanding, it was not until 1860 that universal white male
suffrage prevailed. (see also political
power)
Although by the time of the Revolution
he had changed his opinion, Benjamin Franklin spoke for the Whig liberalism of
the Founding Fathers when he observed that "as to those who have not
landed property the allowing them to vote is an impropriety." John
Adams in his famous Defense of the Constitutions of Government of
the United States of America (1787) was more explicit, finding
that, if the majority were to control all branches of government, "Debts
would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on
others; and at last a downright equal division of everything be demanded and
voted." Thomas Babington Macaulay spoke
for English Whigs when he found universal suffrage "incompatible, not
with this or that form of government, but with all forms of government."
French statesmen like François Guizot (1787-1874) and Adolphe Thiers
(1797-1877) expressed similar sentiments, and on the rest of the continent
universal suffrage was for the most part a remote ideal until the turn of this
century.
Objections to democracy
were not limited to misgivings about the fate of private property. Many
liberals genuinely feared the potentialities for tyranny latent in democracy.
If the will of the majority is to be supreme, everyone will be at its mercy. Benjamin
Constant (1767-1830), noted French diplomat, expressed a general
concern when he observed that from the point of view of the individual it
makes no difference whether he is tyrannized by a single despot or by the
totality of individuals composing his society; he is oppressed just the same.
Indeed the latter could well be worse: tyrannicide might rescue him from an
individual oppressor and, in any event, others would commiserate with him;
whereas if oppressed by a large majority, he would have no comparable recourse
or comfort.
Despite such misgivings, the voices of
Thomas Paine and Jefferson, of Rousseau and de Tocqueville, and of the English
philosophical radicals led by Bentham and James and John Stuart Mill finally
prevailed among the liberal philosophers. But the democratic principle that
they espoused had first to be reconciled with the liberal requirement that
power be limited. The problem was to accomplish this in a manner consistent
with the democratic ideal, that is, without doing violence to the majoritarian
principle and in conformity with Bentham's dictum that each person is to count
as one and no one as more than one. How, since hereditary elites were
discredited, could the power of a majority be checked without giving greater
voice to property owners or some other kind of "natural" elite?
The essence of the liberal solution is
twofold. It lies partly in making the decision of any given majority subject
to the concurrence of other majorities distributed over a period of time. The
majority that elects a president of the United States, for example, is
different from the majority that two years before elected one-third of the
Senate and two years later elects another third. Likewise two-thirds of the
senators are elected by a majority other than the majority by which members of
the House of Representatives are elected. These groups, in turn, are checked
by the Constitution, which was approved and later amended by majorities no
longer alive. While an act of Britain's Parliament is forthwith a part of the
British constitution, Parliament before acting on a highly controversial issue
of great concern to the country will seek a mandate from the people, that is
to say, a majority other than the majority that elected it. Thus, the
"people" to be consulted in a liberal democracy, if they are not
quite that partnership envisaged by Burke ". . . between those who are
living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born," are not
either, except in a revolutionary crisis, a "momentary aggregation"
whose sovereign will may be ascertained by a plebiscite. Burke's
characterization of democracy as "the vulgar practice of the hour"
may well apply to those spontaneous assemblies of the people to which Rousseau
would assign plenary power; it can be denied that it applies to the mainstream
version of liberal democracy that is essentially constitutional
democracy, that is to say, democracy in which the power of a current
majority is checked by the verdicts of majorities that preceded it.
The second part of the solution is
related more directly to the initial inspiration of liberalism, its basic
commitment to the autonomy and integrity of the individual, which the
limitation of power is, after all, intended to preserve. In the liberal
understanding, the individual is not only a citizen who shares a social
compact with his fellows; he is a person and, as such, he possesses rights
that the state may not invade. Even as a citizen, he must, if majoritarianism
is to be meaningful, possess such rights. Majorities do not form in a vacuum.
Unless a majority verdict is some miraculous coincidence or spontaneous merger
of individual judgments--which it is not--it can come about only if
individuals are free to some extent to formulate and express and exchange
their views. This involves, beyond the right to speak and write freely, the
freedom to associate and organize and, above all, freedom from fear of
reprisal. But the individual has rights apart from his role as citizen. These
are rights that secure his personal safety and hence his protection from
arbitrary arrest and punishment. And beyond these are those rights that
preserve large areas of privacy. In
a liberal democracy there are affairs that do not concern the state, even if
the state's interest in them reflects the will of an overwhelming majority.
Such affairs may range from the worship of God, to works of art, to how
parents raise their children. And for the liberals of the 18th and 19th
centuries they included, above all, most of those activities in which
individuals engage in production and trade. (see also human
rights)
Classical liberals differed in their
interpretation of individual rights--whether to understand them as
"natural" (Locke) and therefore "inalienable" and
"indefeasible," to justify them as functional (Bentham) or
traditional (Burke). But eloquent and persuasive declarations affirming such
rights were embodied in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the American
Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the French Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, and the basic documents of nations
throughout the world that later used these as their models. Freedom thereby
became more than the right to make a fractional contribution in an
intermittent mandate to government; it designated the right of men to live
their own lives.
Rhetoric and reality rarely coincide.
Liberals were not usually troubled over the small numbers by whom, in fact,
such freedom was enjoyed, and the masses were still too inarticulate to remind
them. In the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the blessings of liberty must
have seemed remote to millions of brutally exploited factory workers huddled
together in the slums of their dreary cities. Liberals have been accused of
concentrating exclusively on the property right to the neglect of such abuses,
and, in general, few liberals paused to ponder how the freedom they cherished
would be used, and it did not occur to them, as it has to a later generation
of libertarians, that such freedom brings with it a heavy burden of choice and
decision. Finally, in their concern for the individual, liberals depicted him
too simply as an isolated monad, and society as a collection of such monads,
failing to reckon with the myriad social relationships through which
individuals achieve identity.
In historical perspective it can be
seen that the complex of forces, of which classical liberalism was the
rationalization, wrought great changes. The feudal system was destroyed.
Capitalism replaced the static society of the Middle Ages. A functionless
aristocracy was deprived of its privileges. Tyrants were challenged and
curbed. The middle class was left free to employ its energies in expanding the
means of production and vastly increasing the wealth of society.
Representative government came into its own. As they set about limiting the
sovereign power, liberals converted the ideal of constitutional government
into a reality, and they developed a doctrine of individual rights, including
the right to worship freely, the right of a free press, of free speech, and of
free assembly, which lies at the heart of modern democracy. J.S. Mill's essay On Liberty (1859) is justly
celebrated as one of the great testimonials to civil liberties.
However, vast economic changes, first
in Great Britain and later in the United States, led increasingly at the turn
of this century to disenchantment with the principal economic basis for
liberalism--the ideal of a market economy. (This ideal had never evoked
comparable loyalties on the continent of Europe.) The advent on a large scale
of absentee ownership made it increasingly difficult to invoke a functional
justification for many forms of private property. Multitudes whose real
bargaining power fell far short of what it was in theory--especially those
seeking work--did not actually enjoy the "free choices" postulated
by the economists. Economic man's "pecuniary sagacity" (Veblen) fell
far short of the idealizations of textbook writers; and modern psychology
suggests that he is at least as much a creature of impulse, habit, and custom
as he is a rational calculator with his eye on the main chance. The often
impenetrable complexity of goods offered on the market in an economy where
transactions are no longer simple affairs of horse-trading, not to mention the
mendacity of much advertising, seemed to make the consumer more a subject than
a sovereign. Reality failed to approximate the state of free competition
envisaged by the classical economists. Orthodox liberal economists have
accordingly referred with increasing frequency to "frictions" and
"exceptions" and have employed qualifications ("in the long
run"; "other things being equal") to save their
generalizations. The result has been an abstract science that a new generation
of liberals and multitudes of socialists came to regard as having only limited
relevance to the real world.
Worst of all, according to its
critics, the profit system concentrated vast
wealth in relatively few hands, with several decisively adverse consequences.
First, great masses of people failed to benefit from the wealth flowing from
mines and mills and lived under impoverished conditions that became
increasingly anomalous in an affluent society. Second, since those who alone
could consume the output of a vastly expanded productive system lacked the
purchasing power, the system, after other markets were glutted, endemically
failed to realize its productive potentialities and recurrently came to a near
halt in periods of stagnation that have come to be called
"depressions." Finally, those who owned the means of production, or
their managers, were endowed with vast power that could be used to overwhelm
the individual as surely as the power of a 17th-century despot, thanks to the
device of incorporation on a scale far beyond the simple requirements of
efficiency and economy in production. In short, the near atrophy of government
achieved in the 19th century had left a vacuum that private interests readily
filled. Businesses were effectively organized and some of them used their
power to influence and control government, to manipulate an inchoate
electorate, to limit competition, and to obstruct substantive social reform.
Some of the same forces that had once released the productive energies of
Western society now restrained them; some of the very energies that had
demolished the power of despots now nourished a new despotism. Such, at any
rate, was the verdict of 20th-century liberals and such were the conditions
that led them to oppose private collectivism by supporting a positive role for
government and encouraging the formation of power centres outside business and
government.
The contemporary variant of liberalism
is even more amorphous than the classical. There are no "fathers"
such as John Locke or Adam Smith. In Germany and the Scandinavian countries,
where socialists, even though they trace their ancestry to Marx, are
overwhelmingly revisionist, it is difficult to distinguish between their
program and programs elsewhere designated as liberal. British mainstream
socialism never embraced Marx, and the Labour Party has at times been
difficult to distinguish from the Liberal Party, which largely accounts for
the decline of the latter. U.S. liberal social legislation since the crash of
1929 has been notably formless. But even so, the outlines of contemporary
liberalism are fairly discernible.
Cognizant of the real achievements of
the profit system, liberals do not seek its abolition, only its modification
and control. They find no fixed line laid up in heaven eternally dividing the
private and the public sectors of the economy; the determination, they
contend, must be by reference to what works. The spectre of regimentation in
completely planned economies and the dangers of bureaucracy even in mixed
economies deter them from jettisoning the market
and substituting an omnicompetent state. On the other hand--and this is a
basic difference between classical (or neoclassical) and contemporary
liberalism--most liberals now believe that the dispensations of the market, as
it has in fact operated, must be supplemented and corrected in substantive
ways. They hold that the rewards dispensed by the market are too crude a
measure of the contribution many or most people make to society, and that the
needs of those who lack opportunity or are physically handicapped are ignored.
They contend that enormous social costs incurred in production are not
reflected in market prices, and that resources are used wastefully. Not least,
liberals charge that the market biasses the allocation of human and physical
resources in the direction of satisfying superficial wants (for oversized
motor cars in annual models, changing fashions in attire, and unnecessary
gadgets), while basic needs (for schools, housing, rapid public transit,
sewage treatment plants) go unmet. Finally, although liberals believe that
prices, wages, and profits should continue to be subject to negotiation among
the interested parties and responsive to conventional market pressures, they
insist that price-wage-profit decisions affecting
the economy as a whole must be reconciled with public policy.
To achieve a juster distribution of
rewards, liberals have relied on two major strategies. First, they have
promoted the organization of workers and consumers to improve their power to
bargain with employer-producers. Such a redistribution of power has had
political as well as economic consequences, making possible a party system in
which at least one party is responsive to the interests of wage earners and
consumers. Second, enlisting the political support of the economically
deprived, liberals have evolved the so-called welfare
state, with its panoply of social services
"from the cradle to the grave."
Social legislation, beginning with
free public education and workmen's accident insurance, now includes support
for all who are physically and mentally handicapped, programs of old-age,
unemployment, and health insurance, minimum-wage laws, and--for the most part
still in the blueprint stage--guaranteed annual incomes. Such legislation is
most comprehensive in the Scandinavian
countries and, among countries with mature economies, possibly least
comprehensive in the United States, where
social legislation at the federal level was virtually ignored until passage of
the Social Security Act of 1935.
Liberals have been less successful in
correcting what they regard as an irrational schedule of priorities by using
the taxing powers of government to obtain greater allocations for the public
sector of the economy. They have been least successful, at any rate in the
United States, in persuading the business community and labour unions to
accept government participation in pricing and wage decisions.
Initially, the quest for these
objectives was viewed as requiring a redistribution of wealth to be achieved
by steeply graduated income and death (inheritance) taxes--a program likely,
if it were to become confiscatory, to evoke the unlimited resistance of
high-income groups. Increasingly, as modern technology promised mature
economies miracles of abundance, attention shifted to the institutional
failures that kept such economies from fully realizing their productive
potentialities, especially during periods of mass unemployment and depression.
The culmination of this effort was the White Paper on Employment Policy
produced by Britain's wartime coalition government and, in the United States,
the Employment Act of 1946, which goes well beyond the British, declaring it
to be "the continuing policy and responsibility of the Federal Government
to use all practicable means . . . to promote maximum employment, production,
and purchasing power." Thereafter the old rhetoric about "sharing
the wealth" gave way to concentration on growth rates as liberals,
inspired by J.M. Keynes' General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, urged the use of fiscal
policy--i.e., use of the
government's power to borrow, tax, and spend--not merely to counter
contractions of the business cycle but to encourage expansion of the economy.
Here, clearly, was a program less disruptive of class harmony and the basic
consensus essential to a democracy than the old Robin Hood method of
"taking from the rich and giving to the poor."
In the 1960s the emphasis of liberals
again shifted as it became more and more evident that expanding production is
not an unmixed blessing. The litany is now a familiar one. The same industry
that produces our wealth pollutes our rivers, lakes, and atmosphere. Its
gleaming artifacts become mountains of junk and it menaces the ecological
balance of nature. It concentrates millions in drab cities that, in the United
States at least, are being evacuated by those who can afford to escape to the
suburbs. The result is a daily movement of traffic, choking the highways,
poisoning the air, jangling the nerves. The inventory could be extended
indefinitely. Much of the "wealth" produced by industry hardly
justifies such consequences.
Some criticism goes deeper. It is
urged that, quite apart from its disastrous impact on the environment, modern
technology deracinates man, depriving him of his sense of identity, chaining
him to a treadmill, trapping him in a depersonalized, regimented,
over-organized society. The voice of the romanticist, denouncing preoccupation
with production as a bourgeois aberration or an archaic Protestant ethic and
urging a return to the relaxed, simple life, is once again heard. That voice
is often found persuasive, it so happens, by a new generation of youthful
intellectuals and vagabonds.
Most liberals contend that
environmental disruption is not a necessary consequence of expanding industry
but of a failure to subordinate the quest for quick profits to the
requirements of intelligent planning. The "fallacy of romantic
regression," as the American psychologist Kenneth Keniston has called it,
is also rejected. Nevertheless, there is increased respect for Freud's
reminder in Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Eng.
trans., Civilization
and Its Discontents, 1930) that "power over nature is not the only
precondition of human happiness," and more and more concern is
expressed for the "quality" of life. However, Freud went on to
observe that, if happiness requires more than power over nature, this "is
no ground for inferring that technical progress is worthless from the
standpoint of happiness." Mainstream liberals have agreed.
The traditional coalition on which
liberals in the United States have relied is in disrepair. Ethnic minorities
have become confused and divided by the separatist creed of their more
militant leaders; turmoil has left the academic community traumatized; and
labour unions lack a good deal of their old dynamism. Even the once engagé
artist has been lost to aestheticism and esotericism. The increasing
polarization between right and left finds the liberals attacked on both
flanks, but the appearance of beleaguerment may well be deceptive. Much of the
liberal program has in fact become public policy. When, in the 1930s, Pres. Franklin
D. Roosevelt established the National Resources Planning Board, it was
called un-American by conservatives, its budget was slashed, and it was
finally abolished. Today, although most conservatives might resist liberal
proposals to establish a council on national goals,
they would no doubt support a national agency to plan the use of natural
resources. Despite appearances, Western society could be on the eve of less,
rather than more, polarization.
All of this suggests a new source of
strength for liberalism epitomized in what has been called the "end of
ideology." Whether the movement of Western capitalist nations toward
mixed economies and the Soviet Union's flirtation with the profit motive is
indicative of such a trend need not be explored here. But, clearly, both
socialists and conservatives in western Europe (and the British Commonwealth)
are much less prone to apply pre-established dogma to new problems. And,
except for the far right and left, there is a growing tendency in the United
States to reject doctrinaire approaches to social problems. Ideology may not
be dead, but it appears to be in decline. If the result is a pragmatic,
experimental temper in which old principles are adjusted to new needs and
dissent is not identified with disloyalty, this is very much in the liberal
mood.
The expansion of government power and
responsibility sought by liberals today is clearly opposed to the contraction
of government power and responsibility sought by liberals yesterday. The
content of liberalism varies with varying conditions: liberals may one day
challenge and another day cherish the church; in one age they may seek less
government intervention in economic affairs, in another age more; they have
been hospitable to the interests and ambitions of the business community,
under changed circumstances they may be hostile; for decades they have
preached the virtues of labour unions, they may one day consider their vices.
But in every case the inspiration is the same: a hostility to concentrations
of power that threaten the freedom of the individual and prevent him from
realizing his potentialities; a willingness to re-examine and reconstruct
social institutions in the light of new needs. This willingness, tempered by
aversion to sudden, cataclysmic change, is what sets the liberal off from the
radical, who often ignores its hazards. Also the very eagerness constantly to
entertain and encourage useful change distinguishes the liberal from the
conservative. If the content of liberalism varies, the above listed
characteristics constitute its distinctive and enduring form. (see also political system, economic
theory )
The 18th-century French philosopher
Condorcet could write that "human perfectibility is in reality
indefinite" and that "the progress of this perfectibility,
henceforth independent of any power that might wish to stop it, has no other
limit than the duration of the globe upon which nature has placed us."
Another French philosopher of the Enlightenment, Helvétius, wrote that
"to be happy and to be powerful is only a matter of perfecting the
science of education." In his Autobiography,
John Stuart Mill, reminiscing about the
elder Mill, writes:
So complete was my father's reliance
on the influence of reason over the minds of mankind, whenever it is allowed
to reach them, that he felt as if all would be gained if the whole population
were taught to read, if all sorts of opinions were allowed to be addressed to
them by word and in writing, and if by means of the suffrage they could
nominate a legislature to give effect to the opinions they adopted. He thought
that when the legislature no longer represented a class interest, it would aim
at the general interest, honestly and with adequate wisdom . . .
Commenting on the faith of the
mid-19th century, Henry Adams noted: "Education was divine, and man
needed only a correct knowledge of facts to reach perfection . . ."
Sobered by the tragic events of this
century and informed by new psychological insights into man's biasses and
perversities, a chastened and far more sophisticated liberalism no longer
shares the naive confidence of most classical liberals in man's rationality
and perfectibility and in the inevitability of progress. Most of today's
liberals are more likely to heed those who warn that human nature is
ineradicably flawed than heed those who hope that man may be persuaded to
apply the scientific method to the solution of social problems and thereby
find contentment. There is a strong suspicion that if man had no serious
social problems he would invent them. Nevertheless, the strong commitment of
liberals to social reform suggests a persistent optimism and a belief that man
can control his fate and build a better world. To this extent the Heavenly
City of the Philosophers still beckons them. (H.K.G.)
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자유주의 (自由主義, liberalism)
집단에 의한 통제보다는 개인의 자발성을 우선시하며,
국가와 사회제도는 개인의 자유를 보장하고 개성을
꽃피우기 위해 존재한다고 보는 철학사조.
자유를 희구하여 억압에 항거하고 권력에 저항한 역사는
인류의 역사만큼 오래되었는데, 정치적 자유의 관념은 고대
그리스의 전통에서 찾을 수 있다. 그러나 개인의 자유를
보편적 가치로 인식하고 그것에 기초한 사회제도를
적극적으로 구상하는 자유주의 사상이 본격적으로 전개되어
국가와 사회의 지도원리로 자리잡게 된 것은 근대
유럽에서만 볼 수 있는 고유한 현상이었다. 인간 한 사람 한
사람은 고유의 가치를 지니고 있으며, 자기 완성능력을
갖추고 있다는 인간관, 원리적으로 개인의 자유와 모순되지
않는 정치제도가 존재할 수 있다는 정치관, 개인의 자발성
보장이야말로 사회발전의 조건이라는 사회관 등 자유주의가
전제하고 있는 이러한 관념들은 모두 근대사회의
구성원리를 형성했다. 종교개혁 이후 '신교(新敎)의 자유'
주장, 원죄설의 부정 및 인간의 완성 가능성과 진보의
관념을 강조한 계몽사상, 기본적 인권과 사회계약의 관념,
영국 입헌주의의 역사적 전통, 고전경제학과 자유방임
정책론 등 근대혁명을 이끈 사상과 관념들도 자유주의의
근간이 되었다.
자유주의의 역사적 전개
자유주의라는 용어가 쓰이기 시작한 것은 19세기였지만
자유주의가 의미하는 실질적인 내용은 이미 17~18세기의
부르주아 혁명 이념 속에 내포되어 있었다. 영국은
명예혁명으로 스튜어트 왕조의 절대주의를 청산하고 법에
의한 지배의 전통 위에 의회정치를 정착시킴으로써
근대적인 입헌주의를 도입하기 시작했다. 그러므로 당시
유럽 대륙의 제국가들이 전제주의의 통치 아래 있었다는
사실을 고려해볼 때 영국에서 형성된 입헌국가는
자유주의적 이념들을 조기에 실현한 것이었다. J.로크의
정치이론과 A.스미스의 경제학설이 종종 고전적인
자유주의의 이름으로 불리는 것도 영국에서 처음으로
자유주의에 기반을 둔 정치체제가 성립했기 때문이다.
미국의 독립선언과 뒤이은 프랑스의 인권선언은 근대
정치원리의 기본이념으로서 인간의 자유를 보다 보편적인
용어로 표현하여 자유의 기초를 확립시켰고, 자유주의에
있어 새로운 전기가 되었다. 동시에 프랑스 혁명의
정치과정은 폭력적 수단을 수반하는 급진적인 사회제도의
변혁에 반대하고, 의회제도의 틀 속에서 온건한 개혁을
지향하는 부르주아 이데올로기로서 자유주의의 의미를
확인시켜주었다.
본래 자유주의는 유럽에서 근대 혁명의 보편적 원리를
주창하는 부르주아가 토지귀족세력의 정치적 지배를
타파하고 부르주아의 계급적 이해를 관철하기 위해 19세기
전반에 성립시킨 정치적인 주장이었다. 그러므로 처음부터
자유주의는 양면성, 즉 한편으로는 봉건제와 절대주의를
극복하기 위해 자유·평등의 인간상과 합리주의를
계승했지만 다른 한편으로는 재산과 교양을 지표로 하여
빈곤한 계급을 정치과정에서 제외시키고 자산가 계급에
봉사한다는 이중성을 내포하고 있었다. 또한 자유주의가
비록 국가권력의 개입을 배제하는 주장이라고 하더라도
민족국가의 자립 없이는 자유주의가 정치원리로 확립될 수
없기 때문에 민족주의와 자유주의의 관계도 양의성(兩義性)을
피할 수 없었다. 보통 19세기를 자유주의의 시대라고 하지만
자유주의의 구체적인 전개과정은 각국이 처한 역사적
조건에 따라 서로 다르게 전개되었으며, 민주주의·사회주의·민족주의
등 다른 사회사상과의 관계도 역사의 단계에 따라 변해왔다.
18세기의 휘그주의를 기원으로 하는 영국의 자유주의는 J.벤담의
공리주의와 D.리카도의 경제학을 계승한 이른바 철학적
급진주의 운동을 수용함으로써 산업혁명이 초래한 새로운
사회 상황에 적응하는 데 성공했다. 1832년 선거법 개정을
시작으로 곡물법 철폐(1846), 제2차 선거법 개정(1862)에 이르는
과정은 정치과정을 토지귀족세력의 독점으로부터
해방시키고 자본과 노동의 자유를 실현시키려는 부르주아
정치과정을 점진적으로 의회주의 구조에 도입하면서 영국을
전형적인 자유주의 국가로 성립시켰다. 일정 시기까지
자유당이 노동자를 대표했다는 사실과 얼마 지나지 않아
자유당이 노동당에 그 정치적인 역할을 양도한 사실에서 알
수 있듯이 영국의 경우 자유주의와 사회주의 간의 대립이
대륙의 여러 나라에서만큼 첨예하지 않았기 때문에
자유주의는 당파를 초월한 정치적 전통의 일부가 될 수
있었다.
이와는 달리 프랑스 혁명을 유산으로 짊어진 프랑스
자유주의는 한편에서는 가톨릭의 교권지배와 부르봉 왕조의
정통주의와 싸워야 했고, 다른 한편에서는 자코뱅주의와
혁명적인 민중운동으로부터 자유주의를 끊임없이 구별할
필요가 있었다. 뱅자맹 콩스탕 드 르베크(1767~1830)가
토지소유를 정치적 권리의 불가결한 조건으로 생각했고, F.기조가
일정한 재산을 소유한 사람에게만 선거권을 부여하자는
주장을 끝까지 고집한 것처럼 일반적으로 프랑스
자유주의자들이 정치적 민주화에 소극적이었던 것은 자국의
혁명적 전통에 대한 양면적 태도에서 찾을 수 있다.
나폴레옹 3세가 인민투표를 실시하여 독재적인 권력을
장악하고 나서야 1848년의 사회적 위기가 수습될 수 있었다는
사실은 프랑스 자유주의의 취약성을 보여주는 것이었다. 즉
프랑스의 경우 한편에는 혁명과 급진적 민주주의의 전통이
뿌리 깊이 남아 있었고, 다른 한편에서는 나폴레옹 이후
관료적 지배가 강력하게 독자적인 정치문화를 형성하고
있는 상황에서 프랑스 자유주의는 A. 토크빌 이후 비판과
억제라는 이중적 기능을 담당하지 않을 수 없었다. 영국과
프랑스의 자유주의가 궁극적으로는 체제의 개혁원리일 수
있었던 것과는 달리 정치적 통일 자체가 당면 과제였던 19세기의
독일과 이탈리아에서 자유주의가 정착할 가능성은 거의
없었다. 물론 M.베버와 B.크로체와 같은 이론가들이
자유주의의 역사적 기초에 관해 깊이 있는 연구결과를
낳기도 했지만 자유주의가 독일과 이탈리아에서 정치의
지도원리로 구체적으로 적용된 경우는 드물었다. 비르트
체제와 바이마르 공화국의 사회적 기반의 취약성은 오히려
자유주의를 전면적으로 부정하는 파시즘 운동을 야기하는
계기로 작용했다. 러시아 혁명이 던진 충격과 파시즘의
도전에 직면한 20세기의 유럽은 자유주의에 대한 최대
시련의 장이 되었다. 이러한 위기 상황에서 자유주의의
소생에 공헌한 것은 건국 이래 체제의 원리로 작용하고 있던
미국의 자유주의였다. 미국 사회는 어느 정도 평등성을
유지하고 있었기 때문에 자유주의와 민주주의의 모순이
유럽과 같은 양상으로 표출되지 않았다. 자유민주주의를
조기에 실현한 미국 사회가 뉴딜 정책을 통해
자유방임경제의 방향전환을 완수한 것은 전체주의의 도전에
대한 자유주의의 가장 효과적인 처방을 의미했다. 오늘날
자유주의가 대부분의 선진자본주의 국가에서 체제의 원리로
정착된 것은 의심할 수 없는 사실이다. 물론 현대의
자유주의는 보통선거제와 대중정당제를 당연시하고 있지만,
사회주의적 정책도 부분적으로 받아들였다. 자유주의가 19세기의
부르주아적 제약에서 벗어나 대중사회에 적응할 수
있었다는 사실은 자유주의의 출발점인 개인의 자발성과
개성의 존중에 새로운 문제가 제기되고 있다는 것을
의미한다. 자유주의의 정치 신조는 "권력은 부패한다,
절대권력은 절대적으로 부패한다"라는 액턴 경의 말과
같이 권력에 대한 비판적 견해를 특징으로 하고 있지만 그
이면에는 개인으로서 인간의 능력에 대한 낙관주의가
엄연히 존재한다. 오늘날 자유주의를 표방하는 체제에서도
중앙집권화 현상이 진행되고, 사회조직이 고도화되면서
대중의 수동성과 획일화가 확대되고 있어 자유주의의
의미가 새삼스럽게 재고되고 있다.
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