The liberal tradition of political theory

Introduction

Liberalism ranks with Marxism among the most important philosophies of our time, supporting democracy in politics and capitalism in economics. It is an intellectual movement that keeps adjusting to new situations, not one fixed doctrine, so an essay on it should give its common core, its strands and its critics.

The liberal tradition

Liberalism rests on a commitment to the individual, freedom, toleration and consent. It began as a protest against privileged, hierarchical authority and absolute monarchy, and it treats the person as the end and the state as the means, a necessary evil with no absolute authority. NCERT describes the same outlook from the individual's side. Liberals distrust political authority and generally rank individual liberty above other values, equality included; and they hold that groups such as the family, society or community matter only because, and only so far as, individuals value them. A young woman's choice to study fine arts rather than the medicine her family wants is, for a liberal, hers to make.

Key features. Rule of law, secure private property, freedom of contract and limited government make up the classical core. Civil liberties, such as free thought, expression, association and movement, are protected, and tolerance means defending a person's right to hold and voice opinions even when one disagrees with them. Mill's harm principle states when liberty may be limited: only to prevent harm to others. Liberals look for fair procedures more than for a fixed end result, and they see open competition, held on free and fair terms, as the most just and efficient way of allocating rewards. In politics the tradition supports democracy and in economics capitalism. IGNOU names Locke, Kant and Mill as the thinkers who shaped it most, and Rawls as its leading twentieth-century voice.

Strands. Classical liberalism (Locke, Adam Smith, Bentham, James Mill, Spencer) wanted a minimal state and freedom from government interference in the economy, on the ground that each person best judges his or her own interest; Locke added the natural rights to life, liberty and property. By the late nineteenth century industrial profit had gathered in a few hands while many stayed poor, and this exposed the strand's weakness. Modern or welfare liberalism answered that poverty, disease, discrimination and ignorance are themselves obstacles to freedom, which only state action can remove. J. S. Mill began the shift by separating self-regarding from other-regarding actions; Green, Hobhouse and Laski carried it further; and Keynes's case for active government spending lay behind the growth of welfare programmes in the liberal democracies after 1945. NCERT notes the same change: historically liberalism favoured the free market and a minimal state, but present-day liberalism accepts the welfare state and measures to reduce social and economic inequality. Rawls joined liberty with equality in his justice as fairness, written to meet the needs of the liberal democratic welfare state. Neo-liberalism (Hayek, Friedman, Nozick) is classical liberalism brought back. Its objection to the welfare state is moral: compelling the more able to support the less able is a forced transfer that violates individual liberty, so the state should again be minimal and the market free. Its opportunity came when Western growth stalled in the 1970s and governments, still paying for welfare, were left with high taxes and heavy debt.

Criticisms. Events have raised doubts of their own: welfare policies have failed in places, and recent economic crises have shaken confidence in the tradition's future. Communitarians, writing against Rawls above all, object that it sets the individual before society and imagines persons as if they stood apart from it. Feminists object that the individual at its centre is modelled on men, so that its individualism ends up legitimising gender inequality. For Marxists its promise of civic rights and equality is hollow while class power stays unequal, and IGNOU itself says the tradition has never lost its bourgeois character.

The liberal view of liberty, equality and rights

On liberty, the classical strand stresses freedom from outside authority, and the modern strand adds freedom for moral and self-development. On equality, liberals favour open competition under fair conditions, and they hold that political, social and economic inequalities need not be linked and should each be addressed in the right way. On rights, the line from Locke holds that people have rights by their nature and that government exists to protect them.

Liberalism in India

Values central to the tradition appear in the Indian Constitution: the Preamble enshrines freedom and equality, the Constitution is the highest law of the land, so the rights it recognises, called Fundamental Rights, have primary importance, and courts have reinterpreted them as circumstances change. India adopted universal adult franchise from the start of its Constitution in 1950, and it took up economic liberalisation in the 1990s. The Constitution also allows reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes. That policy is defended by pointing to past exclusion and attacked by critics who invoke the right to equal treatment, so the argument continues.

Conclusion

The liberal tradition has made individual liberty, rights and tolerance central to political life. Its movement from a minimal state to welfare and back towards the market shows that it answers changing conditions, and its critics, Marxists, feminists and communitarians, have shaped the debates of the paper.