A critical examination of the fundamental tenets of liberalism

Introduction

To examine the fundamental tenets of liberalism critically is to set out what liberals hold and then to test each tenet against its strengths and the objections raised from other traditions.

Main features of the liberal tradition

Liberalism is an ideology built on individualism, freedom, toleration and consent. It arose with the Renaissance and Reformation as the voice of the rising middle class, at first as a protest against hierarchy, privilege and the absolute authority of monarchs, and its slogan was freedom. Whatever the version, the central point is liberty: a liberal insists that the liberty of the individual is the first goal of public policy and treats the state as a means and the individual as the end, so that the state is at best a necessary evil. Following Locke, the main tenets can be set out as follows:

1. Natural rights. People hold rights, above all to life, liberty and property, by nature, and no authority may violate them; government exists to protect them and is formed and may be dissolved by the people.
2. Rational individuals. Men and women are rational creatures, and the dignity, independent existence and judgment of the individual must be respected in policy.
3. Civil liberties. Freedom of thought and expression, association and movement, personal freedom and strict observance of legal procedure.
4. Harmony of interests. There is no basic clash between a person's self-interest and the common interest.
5. Procedure over end-state. Liberals look for the right procedure in the spheres of freedom, equality, justice and democracy, rather than for a fixed result.
6. Artificial institutions. Civil society and the state are made by individuals to serve a common interest, and so rest on consent.

Two strands emerged: individualism, which stresses the rational individual (Locke and Adam Smith), and utilitarianism, which asks for the greatest happiness of the greatest number (Bentham and Mill). Politically liberalism supports democracy; economically it has gone with capitalism. Kant gave the strongest case for individual autonomy, a choice free of external pressure and of internal passions and guided by reason; Locke, Kant and Mill shaped the tradition, and Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1993), set the terms of its contemporary debate.

Examining the tenets

Individual and state. The idea of the individual as end and state as means is liberalism's contribution to limiting power; but Marxists reply that the state is a class instrument that protects the property-owning class, and conservatives reply that individuals do not exist apart from society. Natural rights and consent. These supply a standard for judging government: the idea that we are born with rights no state may take away has long been used against arbitrary power and in defence of individual freedom. But the natural law said to lie behind them is widely rejected today, and rights are now seen more as guarantees that people themselves arrive at. Harmony of interests. The assumption that self-interest and common interest do not conflict sits uneasily with the poverty and concentrated wealth that classical liberalism produced, which led to the call for welfare and positive liberty. Procedure over end-state. A concern with fair procedure protects pluralism, but a procedure that ignores outcomes can leave deep inequalities intact; the contrast between procedural and substantive views of democracy shows the same tension.

Criticisms of liberalism

1. Bourgeois character. Locke's thought protected the interests of the new merchant and industrial class and encouraged capitalism; liberalism arose to defend the middle class against feudal interests and keeps that character. (2) Unequal group power. Liberal democracy assumes the state represents all groups and reconciles their interests, whereas actual power is unequal; Marxists say its commitment to civil rights and formal equality ignores the reality of class power. (3) Gendered individualism. Feminists hold that the individual of liberal theory is constructed on male norms, which legitimises gender inequality. (4) Internal drift and crisis. Liberalism has moved between laissez-faire and welfare, and the economic crises of the twenty-first century now test it. (5) Particularism posing as universalism. Communitarians and multiculturalists argue that liberal universal principles carry the hidden experience of Western society and standardise away the justice of particular communities.

The criticisms are weighty, but liberalism has shown a capacity to adapt: it took welfare policy and the democratisation of the state into modern liberal theory, and it has moved from laissez-faire to the welfare state and back towards a minimal state. Its future depends on how it meets these challenges.

Conclusion

The tenets of liberalism have given modern politics its vocabulary of rights, consent and limited government, and its critics have exposed what it leaves out: class power, gender and community. A fair judgment is that liberalism's central ideas are valuable but need supplementing by attention to social conditions, and that this is what its modern versions attempt.