Liberalism and Individualism
The term ‘liberal’ has been in use since the fourteenth century. There are many versions of
liberal theory, but the central point of all versions is freedom. Liberalism is a principle of
politics which insists on liberty of individuals as the first and foremost goal of public policy.
Liberty, in this sense, implies ‘liberation’ from restraints- particularly, from the restraints
imposed by an authoritarian state.
The context of Liberalism
Liberalism was a product of the breakdown of feudalism in Europe, and the growth,
in its place, of a market or capitalist society. Liberal ideas were radical they sought
fundamental reform and even, at times, revolutionary change. The English
Revolution of the seventeenth century, and the American Revolution of 1776 and French
Revolution of 1789 each embodied elements that were distinctively liberal. Liberals
challenged the absolute power of the monarchy, supposedly based on the doctrine of the
‘divine right of kings’. In place of absolutism, they advocated constitutional and, later,
representative government Liberals criticized the political and economic privileges of the
landed aristocracy and the unfairness of a feudal system in which social position was
determined by the ‘accident of birth’. They also supported the movement towards freedom of
conscience in religion and questioned the authority of the established church.
Liberalism during Cold War
The Cold War period (1945–90) witnessed the consolidation of liberalism within the
US-led capitalist West, even though its global ambitions were firmly resisted within the
Soviet-led communist East and across much of what became known as the Third World.
This consolidation was evident in the spread of Western liberal democracy. A wave of
democratization occurred between 1943 and 1962, and involved countries such as West
Germany, Italy, Japan and India; with a further wave of democratization starting in 1974, and
affecting Greece, Portugal, Spain and much of Latin America.
The end of the Cold War had yet more significant implications for liberalism, encouraging
some to declare that it amounted to the ‘liberal moment’ in world affairs. The overthrow
of communist regimes across Eastern Europe sparked a new and more dramatic process
of democratization, with the formation of governments through multiparty elections
and the adoption of market-based economic reforms becoming substantially more
common.
Development of Liberal Theory
The liberal theory developed in two main directions: a) individualism and b) utilitarianism.
Individualism focused on the individual as a rational creature. It required that individual’s
dignity, independent existence and judgment should be given full recognition while making
public policy and decisions. John Locke and Adam Smith are the early exponents of
individualism. On the other hand, utilitarianism stands for ‘the greatest happiness of the
greatest number’ where the interest of the few may be sacrificed in the interest of majority.
Bentham and Mill are the supporters of utilitarianism.
Core Themes
Liberalism undoubtedly favours openness, debate and self-determination, it is also
characterized by a powerful moral thrust. The moral and ideological stance of
liberalism is embodied in a commitment to a distinctive set of values and beliefs. The
most important of these are:
1. Individualism
2. Freedom
3. Reason
4. Justice
5. Toleration
Individualism
In the feudal period, there was little idea of individuals having their own interests or
possessing personal and unique identities. Rather, people were seen as members of the social
groups to which they belonged: their family, village, local community or social class. Their
lives and identities were largely determined by the character of these groups in a process that
changed little from one generation to the next. However, as feudalism was displaced by
increasingly market-orientated societies, individuals were confronted by a broader range of
choices and social possibilities.
They were encouraged, perhaps for the first time, to think for themselves, and to think of
themselves in personal terms. A serf, for example, whose family might always have lived
and worked on the same piece of land, became a ‘free man’ and acquired some ability to
choose for whom to work, or perhaps the opportunity to leave the land altogether and
look for work in the growing towns or cities. As the certainties of feudal life broke down, a
new intellectual climate emerged. Rational and scientific explanations gradually displaced
traditional religious theories, and society was increasingly understood from the viewpoint of
the human individual. Individuals were thought to possess personal and distinctive qualities:
each was of special value.
Freedom
A belief in the supreme importance of the individual leads naturally to a commitment to
individual freedom. Individual liberty (liberty and freedom being interchangeable) is for
liberals the supreme political value and, in many ways, the unifying principle within liberal
ideology.
Nevertheless, liberals do not accept that individuals have an absolute entitlement to
freedom. If liberty is unlimited it can become ‘licence’, the right to abuse others. In On
Liberty, John Stuart Mill, distinguished clearly between actions that are ‘self-regarding’, over
which individuals should exercise absolute freedom, and those that are ‘other-regarding’,
which can restrict the freedom of others or do them damage. Mill did not accept any
restrictions on the individual that are designed to prevent a person from damaging himself
or herself, either physically or morally.
Reason
The liberal case for freedom is closely linked to a faith in reason. Liberalism is, and remains,
very much part of the Enlightenment project. The central theme of the Enlightenment
was the desire to release humankind from its bondage to superstition and ignorance, and
unleash an ‘age of reason. Reason emancipates humankind from the grip of the past and from
the weight of custom and tradition. Each generation is thus able to advance beyond the last as
the stock of human knowledge and understanding increases progressively. Reason, moreover,
is significant in highlighting the importance of discussion, debate and argument.
Justice
Justice denotes a particular kind of moral judgement, notably one about the distribution
of rewards and punishment. In short, justice is about giving each person what he or she
is ‘due’. The liberal theory of justice is based on a belief in equality of various kinds. In the
first place, individualism implies a commitment to foundational equality. Human beings
are seen to be ‘born’ equal in the sense that each individual is of equal moral worth, an
idea embodied in the notion of natural rights or human right. liberals fiercely disapprove of
any social privileges or advantages that are enjoyed by some but denied to others on the basis
of ‘irrational’ factors such as gender, race, colour, creed, religion or social background.
Rights should not be reserved for any particular class of person, such as men, whites,
Christians or the wealthy. This is the sense in which liberalism is ‘difference blind’. The most
important forms of formal equality are legal equality and political equality. The former
emphasizes ‘equality before the law’ and insists that all non-legal factors be strictly irrelevant
to the process of legal decisionmaking. The latter is embodied in the idea of ‘one person, one
vote; one vote, one value’, and underpins the liberal commitment to democracy.
Toleration
The liberal social ethic is characterized very much by a willingness to accept and, in
some cases, celebrate moral, cultural and political diversity. the liberal preference
for diversity has been associated more commonly with toleration. This commitment
to toleration, attributed to the French writer Voltaire (1694–1778), is
memorably expressed in the declaration that, ‘I detest what you say but will
defend to the death your right to say it. Locke argued that, since the proper function of
government is to protect life, liberty and property, it has no right to meddle in ‘the care of
men’s souls’. Toleration should be extended to all matters regarded as ‘private’, on the
grounds that, like religion, they concern moral questions that should be left to the individual.
TYPES OF LIBERALISM
Liberalism comes in a variety of forms. These include the following:
1) Classical liberalism
2) Modern liberalism
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism was the earliest liberal tradition. Classical liberal ideas developed
during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and reached their high point during
the early industrialization of the nineteenth century. As a result, classical liberalism has
sometimes been called ‘nineteenth-century liberalism’. The cradle of classical liberalism
was the UK, where the capitalist and industrial revolutions were the most advanced.
Classical liberalism draws on a variety of doctrines and theories. The most important of
these are:
1) Natural rights
2) Utilitarianism
3) Economic liberalism
4) Social Darwinism.
Natural rights
The natural rights theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as John
Locke and Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), the US political philosopher and statesman,
had a considerable influence on the development of liberal ideology. For Locke and
Jefferson, rights are ‘natural’ in that they are invested in human beings by nature or God.
They are, in Jefferson’s words, ‘inalienable’ because human beings are entitled to them by
virtue of being human: they cannot, in that sense, be taken away. Natural rights are thus
thought to establish the essential conditions for leading a truly human existence.
For Locke, there were three such rights: ‘life, liberty and property’. Locke believed
in limited government. The legitimate role of government is limited to the protection of
‘life, liberty and property’. Therefore, the realm of government should not extend beyond
its three ‘minimal’ functions:
a) maintaining public order and protecting property
b) providing defence against external attack
c) ensuring that contracts are enforced.
Utilitarianism
An alternative and highly influential theory of human nature was put forward in the early
nineteenth century by utilitarian thinkers, notably Jeremy Bentham and James Mill. Bentham
regarded the idea of rights as ‘nonsense’ and called natural rights ‘nonsense on stilts’. In their
place, he proposed what he believed to be the more scientific and objective idea that
individuals are motivated by self-interest, and that these interests can be defined as the desire
for pleasure, or happiness, and the wish to avoid pain, both calculated in terms of utility. the
principle of ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’ can be used to establish which
policies or institutions will benefit society at large. Bentham held that the principle of utility
could be applied to society at large and not merely to individual human behaviour.
Institutions and legislation can be judged by the yardstick of ‘the greatest happiness’.
Economic liberalism
The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed the development of classical
economic theory in the work of political economists such as Adam Smith and David
Ricardo (1770–1823). Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was in many respects
the first economics textbook. Smith thought of the economy as a market, indeed as a series
of interrelated markets.
He believed that the market operates according to the wishes and decisions of free
individuals. Freedom within the market means freedom of choice: the ability of the
businesses to choose what goods to make, the ability of workers to choose an employer,
and the ability of consumers to choose what goods or services to buy. Relationships within
such a market – between employers and employees, and between buyers and sellers –
are therefore voluntary and contractual, made by self-interested individuals for whom
pleasure is equated with the acquisition and consumption of wealth. The market should be
‘free’ from government interference because it is managed by what Smith referred
to as an ‘invisible hand’. This idea of a self-regulating market reflects the liberal
belief in a naturally existing harmony among the conflicting interests within
society.
Social Darwinism
One of the distinctive features of classical liberalism is its attitude to poverty and social
equality. An individualistic political creed will tend to explain social circumstances in terms
of the talents and hard work of each individual human being. Individuals make what they
want, and what they can, of their own lives. Those with ability and a willingness to work will
prosper, while the incompetent or the lazy will not. Darwin developed a theory of evolution
that set out to explain the diversity of species found on Earth. He proposed that each species
undergoes a series of random physical and mental changes, or mutations. Some of these
changes enable a species to survive and prosper: they are pro-survival. Other mutations
are less favourable and make survival more difficult or even impossible. A process of ‘natural
selection’ therefore decides which species are fitted by nature to survive, and which are not.
By the end of the nineteenth century, these ideas had extended beyond biology and were
increasingly affecting social and political theory. Spencer, for example, used the theory of
natural selection to develop the social principle of ‘the survival of the fittest’. People who are
best suited by nature to survive rise to the top, while the less fit fall to the bottom. Inequalities
of wealth, social position and political power are therefore natural and inevitable, and no
attempt should be made by government to interfere with them.
Modern liberalism
Modern liberalism is sometimes described as ‘twentieth-century liberalism’. Just as the
development of classical liberalism was closely linked to the emergence of industrial
capitalism in the nineteenth century, so modern liberal ideas were related to the further
development of industrialization. Industrialization had brought about a massive
expansion of wealth for some, but was also accompanied by the spread of slums, poverty,
ignorance and disease. Moreover, social inequality became more difficult to ignore as a
growing industrial working class was seen to be disadvantaged by low pay, unemployment
and degrading living and working conditions. In these changing historical circumstances,
liberals found it progressively more difficult to maintain the belief that the arrival of
industrial capitalism had brought with it general prosperity and liberty for all.
The minimal state of classical theory was quite incapable of rectifying the injustices and
inequalities of civil society. Modern liberals were therefore prepared to advocate the
development of an interventionist or enabling state.
The distinctive ideas of modern liberalism include:
a) individuality
b) positive freedom
c) social liberalism
d) economic management.
Individuality
John Stuart Mill’s ideas have been described as the ‘heart of liberalism’. This is because
he provided a ‘bridge’ between classical and modern liberalism: his ideas look both
back to the early nineteenth century and forward to the twentieth century and beyond. He
thought that liberty was a positive and constructive force. It gave individuals the ability to
take control of their own lives, to gain autonomy or achieve self-realization. He believed
passionately in individuality. The value of liberty is that it enables individuals to develop, to
gain talents, skills and knowledge and to refine their sensibilities. For Mill, there were
‘higher’ and ‘lower’pleasures. Mill was concerned to promote those pleasures that develop an
individual’s intellectual, moral or aesthetic sensibilities.
Positive freedom
The clearest break with early liberal thought came in the late nineteenth century with the
work of the UK philosopher and social theorist T. H. Green. Green proposed that freedom
should also be understood in positive terms. In this light, freedom is the ability of the
individual to develop and attain individuality; it involves people’s ability to realize their
individual potential, attain skills and knowledge, and achieve fulfilment. Thus, whereas
negative freedom acknowledges only legal and physical constraints on liberty, positive
freedom recognizes that liberty may also be threatened by social disadvantage and inequality.
This, in turn, implied a revised view of the state. By protecting individuals from the social
evils that cripple their lives, the state can expand freedom, and not merely diminish it. For
Green, for example, freedom ultimately consisted in individuals acting morally. The state
could not force people to be good; it could only provide the conditions in which they were
able to make more responsible moral decisions. The central thrust of modern liberalism is
therefore the desire to help individuals to help themselves.
Social liberalism
The twentieth century witnessed the growth of state intervention in most Western states
and in many developing ones. Much of this intervention took the form of social welfare:
attempts by government to provide welfare support for its citizens by overcoming poverty,
disease and ignorance. If the minimal state was typical of the nineteenth century, during the
twentieth century modern states became welfare states. This occurred as a consequence of a
variety of historical and ideological factors. Modern liberals defend welfarism on the basis of
equality of opportunity. If particular individuals or groups are disadvantaged by their social
circumstances, then the state possesses a social responsibility to reduce or remove these
disadvantages to create equal, or at least more equal, life chances. Citizens have thus acquired
a range of welfare or social rights, such as the right to work, the right to education and the
right to decent housing. Welfare rights are positive rights because they can only be satisfied
by the positive actions of government, through the provision of state pensions, benefits and,
perhaps, publicly funded health and education services.
Economic Management
In The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1963), Keynes challenged
classical economic thinking and rejected its belief in a self-regulating market. Classical
economists had argued that there was a ‘market solution’ to the problem of unemployment
and, indeed, all other economic problems. Keynes argued, however, that the level of
economic activity, and therefore of employment, is determined by the total amount of
demand – aggregate demand – in the economy. He suggested that governments could
‘manage’ their economies by influencing the level of aggregate demand. Government
spending is, in this sense, an ‘injection’ of demand into the economy. Taxation, on the other
hand, is a ‘withdrawal’ from the economy: it reduces aggregate demand and dampens down
economic activity. At times of high unemployment, Keynes recommended that governments
should ‘reflate’ their economies by either increasing public spending or cutting taxes.
Unemployment could therefore be solved, not by the invisible hand of capitalism, but by
government intervention, in this case by running a budget deficit, meaning that the
government literally ‘overspends’. Keynesian demand management thus promised to give
governments the ability to manipulate employment and growth levels, and hence to secure
general prosperity
Conclusion
It is worth noting that Locke’s philosophical and political beliefs represent the basic tenets of
early liberalism which paved the way for the rise of capitalism. Locke particularly promoted
a line of thinking which was designed to protect the economic interests of the then newly
emerging merchant- industrialist class and pleaded for vesting political power in this class.
And it also encouraged capitalism. Liberalism has been a dynamic philosophy which has
responded to the changing needs of time but also has failed
