Classical liberalism
From Hobson's Choice
Classical liberalism was a political philosophy strongly associated with the rise of laissez-faire capitalism and representative democracy. The first liberal parties were often known as Whigs and associated with the disestablishment of the state church. After the abolition of the Corn Laws in the UK (which restricted importation of wheat), the Liberal Party was closely focused on free trade and small government. Its Usonian counterpart was more interested in industrial promotion, and hence, despite being friendly with British Liberalism, favored high tariffs and public improvements. In modern countries such as Belgium and Australia, the liberal party is associated with politically conservative, free-trade, low-tax ideology.
As opposed to modern "social" liberalism, classical liberalism tends to be considered a conservative ideology that rejects economic populism or business regulation. In countries with no politically consequential left, such as the USA, conservatives regard liberalism as a surrogate of the left. A rueful distinction is often made between "good" liberals like UK Prime Minister William Gladstone.[1]
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Context
During the gradual rise of parliamentary politics (in England), the original conflict of interests was essentially threefold: those of the ruler (aristocratic "Tories"), those of the ruled (the bourgeois "Whigs"), and those outside the political continuum—the peasants, the poor, the religious dissenters and Catholics, women, and Manchester. At first, English political traditions naturally assigned far greater weight to the interests of the aristocracy, and less to lower social orders. Even then, however, the aristocracy needed to split the social base immediately below them, viz., the bourgeois, and co-opt the social base below the bourgeous: farming interests, military veterans, and opponents of the new industrialism. By the time of the English Revolution this had become impossible: the Tories were much too fractured to put up a unified (and therefore, reasonable) front to the Whigs, and the Whigs had won over the unrepresented radical classes of religious dissenters and urban poor. Victory in the Civil War was disastrous for the revolutionary coalition, and infighting naturally brought about the Restoration (1660). During the next several decades, the Whigs and the Tories battled over the royal prerogatives and control over the Anglican Church. During this period, parliamentary politics was wholly personal, dominated by patronage and tiny numbers of voters, and egregious opportunism. Political figures frequently changed sides regardless of ideological proclivities.
While the Usonian Revolution introduced dramatic polarization to British politics, it was accompanied by a sharp increase both in intrigue and in the power of the Commons. Confronting the French Revolution and subsequent period of warfare with a badly weakened aristocracy had a surprising effect: the bourgeois and some middle classes rallied to conservativism with great vigor. At this time, liberals and conservatives were identified more by what they were supposed to have been than what they actually were: the liberals were understood to have regarded the Revolution in France as initially wholesome and destructive of rank superstition, while the conservatives were regarded as defenders of a politically free and active church, a strong aristocracy, and the quiet order of the distant past. In effect, the conservatives believed that society had gone wrong by adopting unnatural and fatuous ideals, such as those espoused by the Enlightenment philosophers. Ideally, what was needed was a return to a sense of duty, moral rectitude, and respect for social rank. On the other hand, liberals favored a rapid reordering of society along rational lines, with the goal of sharply increasing prosperity. This was to become known as "classical liberalism": laissez-faire economic policies at home, free trade abroad, disestablishment of the state church, personal liberty, and collateral reforms.
Emergence of the Liberal Parties
This represented progressive thought because it rejected the then-conservative ideology of governing through strict control of social conduct. Instead of pushing people back into an idyllic past that had never existed, the object was to unleash industrial efficiency. Liberals generally sided the abolition of slavery, although this is a broad generalization.[2] Classical liberalism developed an attachment to the concept of political rights of individuals, which led to some surprising results. The Whigs favored the initial reforms of voting rights, such as regular apportionment of seats in the Commons on the basis of current population (1832); but their heirs, the Liberals, opposed the extension of the franchise on the grounds that lower classes, armed with the vote, would encroach on the property rights of the upwardly mobile (see Social Democracy & Liberalism). After the 1867 Reform Bill was passed over their opposition the Liberals did favor the passage of the secret ballot; if voting was a right, it was meaningless if subject to coercion.[3] In 1867, when the Second Reform Bill extended the vote to nearly a fourth of the adult population, the Whigs were mostly opposed; it was passed by the Conservative PM Disraeli (allegedly as part of a devious strategy to crush the Whigs). Liberalism regarded political power instrumentally: it was vested best to protect the structure of negatively-defined liberty.
Nevertheless, there were other aspects of classical liberalism, at least as understood by its practitioners. First and foremost was the goal of a society in which rationalism trumped class power. As with all lofty goals, there was ample opportunity for hypocrisy and opportunism in this regard. Gladstone's anti-Catholic obsession was extreme, even for the 19th century.[4] His mania for defending free trade and free enterprise was supposed to have been offset by institutional reforms, such as universal education and the abolition of debt peonage in Ireland.[5] It was also to have been offset by a dogged conviction that free enterprise would make Britain rich... so rich that labor would be dear and have no need for state aid.
In the United States and other developing countries, the universally uplifting principle of free enterprise was offset by the immutable fact that industrialization there was impossible without some means of overcoming the price advantage of British imports. Britain industrialized under the influence of highs tariffs. The UK did adopt free trade after it had industrialized, but in 1820 it had the highest tariffs in Europe.[6] In the early days of the Republic, most tax revenue came from tariffs and the rate was between 25-35%. With Republican rule, those rates rose to 40-50%. Public works projects also became a major business of government, vastly enhancing returns to capital and creating collateral business opportunities.
From a great distance, it seems ironic that free enterprise, classless ideals of 19th century liberalism led not merely to conflicting policies—Gladstone versus Lincoln—but to bitter animosity between rival practitioners. Henry Charles Carey argued that free enterprise led to a harmonious resolution of social conflicts, or would have were it not for the disastrous "unnatural" intervention of English/European finance capital. The public works and tariff schemes of the Republicans and their counterparts in Conservative Canada (under PM John A. MacDonald) were intended to make an unregulated market economy work. Naturally, the economic circumstances of the three countries was quite different. After the Usonian Civil War, the Usonian government was under the control of fast-growth Republicans, while the Canadian government was mainly focused on maintaining industrial growth in close proximity to its protectionist neighbor. At that time, the Conservatives of Canada were the home of nationalists, whose animus was directed against the USA; but since the Republican Party was Carey-ite liberal, the [economically nationalist] Conservatives had to be too. In the early years of its existence, the Republican Party and the Conservative Party both functioned as their country's respective "liberal" party, with nationalist economic policies characterized by a master plan of expansion and and rationalization. The Liberal Party of Canada and the Democratic Party of the USA, during this same period, corresponded to the Tory Party in Britain in the sense that they rejected a centralized plan of national/imperial expansionism, in favor of defending ad hoc a plethora of competing legacy interests. The Tories were protectionist, however (in contrast to the Democrats and Canadian Liberals) because that corresponded to prevailing industrial interests: the Canadians and Usonians required tariffs to stimulate industry, which punished other sectors of the economy and stimulated radicalism, while the British Liberals opposed tariffs because industry there needed none.
The major imperial interest of the British government during the Gladstone years was expansion of the net financial position of London to serve its fiduciary obligations; with the stalemate in labor relations during the latter 19th century, Conservatives and Liberals were unable to reach a plan for stimulating the economy and showed little interest in doing so. The Tories favored the "Imperial System" of tariffs on imports from outside the empire, while the Liberals favored further reforms of public institutions: the centerpiece was conversion of Asia into a liberal success story. Liberal imperialism, once a logical absurdity, was actually an inevitable development: in order for liberalism to reach its potential, areas still populated by their original inhabitants (unlike the Americas) had to be evangelized to free trade.[7] Failure to do so would leave Britain stranded in a cesspool of labor strife, decaying (because uncompetitive) industry, and social atomization. Success would mean the glorious vindication of both economic and political liberty.
Contrast With Social Liberalism
See Sin in State, majestically drunk;It is commonly assumed that classical liberalism and modern "social" liberalism are inherently incompatible, although contemporary practitioners managed deeper contradictions. "Liberalism" as a concept was related to abundance through freedom: in Alexander Pope's time "frank" implied sexually available. In Romeo and Juliet, II.ii., the young lady exclaims,
Proud as a Peeress, prouder as a Punk;
Chaste to her Husband, frank to all beside,
A teeming Mistress, but a barren Bride.
Alexander Pope, "To a Lady"
But to be frank, and give it thee again.This is part of the sexiest exchange in literature; Juliet is explaining why she would like to withdraw her promise to be Romeo's wife. Romantic as the passage is, and as thickly as it drapes the sensitive soul in languid mists of longing, yet it is a basic idea of both classical economics and ur-liberalism. Juliet's power to express her love for Romeo is bound by Renaissance social convention (not to mention her family's blood vendetta with his). While her word play teases out the conceit of courtly poetry, of falling in love again, and returning to that shock of falling in love, she then slices through the metaphor: "I wish but for the thing I have/My bounty is as boundless as the sea." In liberty, abundance. For Shakespeare and his sexually awakened characters, generosity ("liberal," "frank") translates to abundance; chastity translates to poverty:
And yet I wish but for the thing I have:
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
Usura slayeth the child in the wombWhile Pound's denunciation of usury (the charging of [high] interest rates) irritates economists, the concept expressed here is the connection between tightfisted hoarding (hence, usury) and chastity borne of financial anxiety. Liberalism elevated the individual ethically through the concept of rights; and some who remained dogmatically faithful to classical liberalism soon converted this to a petty replica of the divine right of kings—a conservative principle par excellence. But liberation of the human spirit required the idea of an obligation of society to the individual person, without which there could be no liberation.
It stayeth the young man's courting
between the young bride and her bridegroom
It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth
Ezra L. Pound, Cantos, "With Usura"
On the instrumental side, the concept was fairly intuitive: liberation, including the liberation of trade and enterprise, would unleash creative powers in the same sense that sexual availability unlocks that form of pleasure. Conservatives would be horrified at the latter statement, with its salacious call for a general orgy; but the latter idea was that political freedom (enforced by immutable rights) would lead to a unifying effect of growth and expansion. As a crude example, in the hyper-regulated Tudor economy, England was an empire in itself; towns like Oxford might as well have separate countries that theoretically shared a monarch. In 1800, England was a unified nation knit together by canals and common weights. In 2008, Europe is what England was then. The unification of the nation, in the minds of liberals, was an ineluctable outcome of freedom. The famous expression of Adam Smith's, that participants in a market are "led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of [their] intention" is not referring to the felicitous outcome of markets clearing; it is referring to the fact that capitalists tend to accumulate as much capital in unregulated economies as that particular economy will bear.[8] In other words, Smith did not presume to tell readers it makes no difference if England leaks capital; he sought to argue that it would, under liberal economic management, always be in the maximum employment of productive capital. This outcome was the very one that mercantilists sought to achieve through interventionist policies; conservative support for intervention arose from the peculiar commercial and industrial interests of this or that parliamentarian.
Hence, there was always an ambitious, expansionist side to classical liberalism. With the failure of free trade imperialism, either as a global project or as a solution to industrial stagnation in late 19th century Britain, classical liberalism began to turn to its reforming side, favoring intensive expansion (universal public education, sanitary cities, public parks). Had the British bourgeois been inflexible, it might have defeated the Labor movement through violent repression and fascism; but mass terror to defend property rights against democracy was never a tenable option. It was cheaper to propitiate the masses than to terrorize them into submission. As classical liberalism gave way to social democracy, the truculent parvenus complained that Britain was turning socialist; but the cost was small. The parvenus retained their wealth, because the masses were subdued through compromise, not Gestapo tactics.
Notes
- ↑ "William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898)," Victorian Web. "Gladstonian liberalism" was popular with many of the major industrial interests of the day, and included low taxes, preferably regressive or proportional; minimal regulation of industry; balanced budgets; and (as a result) slow growth. This changed over time, as Gladstone became somewhat more focused on institutional reform.
- ↑ During the Usonian Civil War, the Liberal Party in Britain was vehemently hostile to the Union and supportive of the CSA; the Whig Party in the USA was sectionally split, with Zachary Taylor (s.1849-1850) siding with the slavocracy.
- ↑ The situation in the USA is rather complicated; until 1865, federal oversight of state voting laws was rare or nil (George Alan Tarr, Understanding State Constitutions Princeton University Press—1998, p.45). Initially, only Vermont did not have financial qualifications for voting (see Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States Basic Books; New Ed edition (2001), p.17); gradually, more states adopted new constitutions that abolished these. In many cases, property requirements applied in some elections, but not in others. During the period 1800 to 1855, most states with property-ownership requirements for voting either abolished them, or replaced them with taxpayer requirements, with militia service a common alternative path to voting rights. By 1860, almost no financial restrictions applied anywhere (Ibid., p.50). In France, the nation oscillated between extremes of universal manhood suffrage and royal dictatorship.
- ↑ An interesting counterpoint: fellow classical liberal Abraham Lincoln was unusually pro-Catholic for his day, and regarded the anti-Catholic parties of his time and place as the bane of his existence.
I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring, all men are created equal. We now practically read it, all men are created equal, except Negroes. When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, all men are created equal except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics. When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
For evidence of Gladstone's ideal of a society where class power was broken, see his speech, "Accomplishments of the [1868-1871 Administration]" (1871).
(Letter to Joshua Speed, 24 August 1855) - ↑ Land Act of 1870. See Marjie Bloy "Gladstone and Ireland 1868-74," Peel Web.
- ↑ See Ha-Joon Chang, "Kicking Away the Ladder: The "Real" History of Free Trade
, FPIF Special Report (December 2003), p.2 (table 1). Technically, countries like Sweden and Russia had so many restrictions on imports that a comparison of their tariff rates with Great Britain's was impossible. Ha-Joon Chang's data comes from P. Bairoch Economics and World History—Myths and Paradoxes Brighton: Wheastheaf (1993) - ↑ Bernard Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism: Classical Political Economy, the Empire of Free Trade, and Imperialism Cambridge University Press (1970). The final chapter, esp. pp.203-206, summarizes Semmel's conclusions.
- ↑ Wealth of Nations, "Of Restraints upon the Importation from Foreign Countries" IV.2.9
See Also
anarcho-capitalism
classical and neoclassical economics
liberalism
--James R MacLean 02:48, 23 April 2008 (PDT)
