The Shaping of the "Second Europe" by Revolutions, 1750 - 1914

Liberalism

Outline of Lecture

I. Difficulties of the Term, "Liberalism"
II. Liberalism as a Broad European Movement for Political Reform
III. 19th Century Liberalism: Dominant Themes in England
IV. Classical Liberalism: The Creed of Early Liberals
V. Late Liberalism: The Creed of Millsian Liberals
VI. Liberalism and the Second Europe

Difficulties of the Term, "Liberalism"

If we were confused talking about Conservatism and the differences between 19^th century and 20^th century conservatives, we may find Liberalism equally confusing. From the Latin root word for "free," it is a term capable of many uses. Like "Conservative", "Liberal" is often used as an derogatory term which contributes to the confusion. "Liberal" can mean open-minded and tolerant, or licentious and immoral. It can be used to describe someone as progressive on a range of social issues such as racial and sexual equality. Or it can describe a cultural totalitarian who wants to silence any opinion not "politically correct" or any use of words which constitute "hate speech." It depends on who is using the term. In the 19^th century Liberal applied both to those who believed in laissez-faire economics and those who advocated state regulation to advance social justice. To those who wanted political reform and those who thought it had gone far enough. To those who thought the government had no right to interfere with property rights and those who wanted property rights curbed for the common good. In the 20^th century "Liberal" has been applied to a wide variety of persons and their economic and political philosophies:

(1) people who want private ownership but state regulation of all industries and businesses which are important to the national interests.

(2) people who favor state ownership of vital industries and businesses, i.e., state socialism.

(3) those who fight any encroachment on civil and political liberties, even against fascists and communists.

(4) those who believe civil rights may be suppressed in national emergency in the national interest.

Liberalism in the 19^th century was both a continental and an English movement. On the continent it challenged conservative and reactionary regimes, allied with nationalism in the first half of the century as a revolutionary movement. There it was identified exclusively as a political movement. In England, which was its homeland, it was a movement with both political and economic goals. So the first order of business is to look briefly at Liberalism as a broad continental movement, after which we will spend the rest of the session examining its English manifestation.

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What do "Liberal" and "Conservative" mean to you? Are they just pejorative labels?

19^th Century Liberalism as a Broad European Movement For Political Reform

As a broad European movement liberalism acted with nationalism to challenge the conservative and reactionary system established in 1815. Liberals in Europe saw themselves as the heirs to the Enlightenment and the early French Revolution. They wanted to achieve the Revolutionary goals of liberty and equality which the conservative and reactionary regimes established in 1815 were trying to stamp out. And so they kept planning and agitating for political democracy, allying themselves with nationalists whose goals had also been frustrated by the conservative reaction of 1815. The French Revolution had unleashed the force of nationalism as well as liberalism, and nationalists wanted independence and national unification for the peoples they represented. Reactionary governments saw both liberals and nationalists as threats to the peace and security of Europe. By 1830, however, these two movements had become so strong that they were a major threat to the security of many governments. This was particularly true in central and eastern Europe where dynastic states such as Austria and Russia ruled large groups of subject peoples with nationalist aspirations. But we shall leave nationalism for the time being and concentrate on liberalism. In England and France middle class liberals became strong enough in 1830 to force democratic reforms which admitted the middle class to power, but still excluded the working class. The movement toward wider democracy took different forms and led to different results in the two countries.

In France in July 1830 the middle class led a revolution against the restored monarchy which had become particularly repressive during the reign of Charles X (1824-1830). But instead of a republic, which many of the middle class leaders, the intellectuals, and the urban workingmen wanted, the revolutionary leadership installed another monarchy, a "Bourgeois Monarchy" (or "July Monarchy") in the person of Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans (1830-48). The new king and his government still delayed reforms and limited political participation to the wealthy industrialists, merchants, and bankers. Repressive policies against liberal reformers by Francis Guizot, chief minister from 1840-48, led to another revolution in 1848.

In February 1848 the Bourgeois Monarchy was overthrown and a brief Second Republic was established. It failed to win support from the nation as a whole. During the months that followed, the middle class, rural peasants, and urban workingmen sought different ends: the middle class wanted a constitutional monarchy or a republic; the peasants wanted a traditional monarchy; and the workingmen wanted a democratic republic, elected by the whole people. During the confusion and the turmoil of working class riots in Paris, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, got himself elected president of the Republic by playing up the Napoleonic legend. In 1851 he ended the Republic and created the Second Empire as Napoleon III (1852-1870). A Third Republic was established after 1870 and eventually achieved liberal aims and enacted mass voting rights. But the development of liberalism in France, as even a brief survey indicates, was not a peaceful one.

In England, on the other hand, the move for liberal reforms never came to revolution, although it came close to it on occasion. At the beginning of the 19^th century England was still governed by large landowners whose privileged political position was protected by restrictions on trade called the Corn Laws. Liberals wanted not only political reforms which would admit the middle class to share in power, but also and end to restrictions on trade and the implementation of laissez-faire economic policy. The first success of Liberals was in enacting the Reform Bill of 1832 which extended voting rights to the middle class and eliminated the "rotten" (unrepresentative) boroughs or towns. Other reforms followed: the ending of slavery in the British Empire (1833); the Factory Act (1833) regulating working conditions (supported by some but not all Liberals); municipal government reform (1835); Repeal of the Corn Laws (1846). The Chartist Movement of 1839-48, growing out of the Liberal tradition, aimed to extend voting rights to the masses, which was done in two later Reform Acts: 1867 which extended the vote to urban workingmen and 1884 which admitted the rural working class. By the end of the century the political and economic goals of Liberalism had been generally accepted as part of the mainstream of the English tradition. Those who advocated greater reforms drifted toward some variety of socialism as the best means of achieving their goals. The course of liberal reform ran much more smoothly in England than in France. At times, as in 1832, England came close to revolution, but side-stepped it narrowly. Maybe Edmund Burke, no Liberal, best explains the reason for the success of Liberalism and the avoidance of revolution in the cause of Liberalism: a deep, abiding commitment to continuity and the preservation of the past. Now that we have seen the broad movement of Liberalism in Europe and the French and English versions, we need to take a closer look at the dominant ideas of Liberalism and certain English Liberals.

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Why did the British escape revolution and the French did not?

19^th Century Liberalism: Dominant Themes in England

Three themes run through 19^th century English Liberalism:

(1) Individualism

(2) Laissez-faire economics

(3) The General Welfare

Early or Classical Liberalism was concerned mainly with the first two. Later Liberalism in John Stuart Mill, the third. There was a clash between these two phases of Liberalism because of the contradictory nature of Liberal ideals. Passionately believing in freedom from government interference, Liberals also devoutly affirmed the worth of the individual. John Stuart Mill and others came to see that political and economic freedom gave a few powerful individuals the power to oppress the greater number of individuals. So, reluctantly, they came to believe that if the value of all individuals was going to be preserved, some government interference was necessary for the greater good of society.

The first Liberal theme, individualism, was an old idea going back to the ancient world and given new emphasis in the Enlightenment. It formed the main strand of political thinking from John Locke to Thomas Jefferson to the philosophes and the French revolutionaries: civil liberties (freedom of thought, expression, association) security of property, and control of political institutions by informed public opinion. Liberals believed that these ideas were to be realized by government acting according to law, through a representative legislature chosen by a wide electorate. Individual rights were natural rights, part of natural law. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) had given these rights moral justification in his postulate that morality consisted in treating persons as ends, not means to an end. Jefferson had affirmed these rights when he said that government existed to protect and realize in society man's inalienable (natural) rights. Despite Jefferson's defense of revolution as a right, Liberals believed that the means of achieving rights was through peaceful, evolutionary change, not through revolution. Just exactly how rights were to be realized in practice was not a matter of common agreement.

Individualism went hand in hand with a second theme of Liberalism, laissez-faire economics. This idea also had a fairly long history behind it. It had been proposed in the 18^th century by Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith, as we saw, favored taking restraints off economic activity and trade to give individuals the maximum freedom to innovate and pursue their own interests. As individuals prospered so would society, as if directed by an "invisible hand" leading to the greater good for all. The middle class liked laissez-faire because it meant the removal of all artificial restrictions which had favored the upper, landed class and fettered the middle class. Laissez-faire also appealed to the industrial middle class because it rationalized self-interest and individual initiative. The Industrial Revolution was raising this class to economic power; they wanted political power to go with it. Early Classical Liberalism, then, was mainly the political and economic creed of the middle class. But problems led to a new theme in Liberalism.

The third theme was the General Welfare, found in Late Liberalism in the thought of John Stuart Mill. The aims of Classical Liberalism had comprehended giving political and economic freedom to the middle class. But extending these freedoms to the working urban and rural classes was not part of the Classical Liberal program. That would have meant violating the twin principles of individualism and laissez-faire. Giving the vote and political power to workingmen would have weakened the power and influence of the middle class. And protecting workingmen from industrial oppression would have meant interfering with the property rights and freedom of the middle class. Something had to happen if Liberalism was going to change sufficiently to take up political and economic reform for the greater good of society. That something was Mill's concept of the General Welfare. Mill said that the greater good of the community also had to be considered in the question of freedom. It was in the best interests of the community to secure, protect, and conserve the interests of all classes. And so Later Liberalism or Mill's Liberalism took up the goal of making liberty a possession available to the larger number of persons, making it a social good as well as an individual good.

Classical Liberalism: the Creed of Early Liberals

The creed of Classical Liberalism was summed up in the twin principles of laissez-faire economics and guaranteeing individual rights and political power for the middle class.

Classical Liberal economic theory was derived from Smith's Wealth of Nations and best represented in the work of David Ricardo (1772-1823). Ricardo, an Englishman who made a fortune as a successful stockbroker and financier, became a member of Parliament and a writer on economic policy. He wrote Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817) in the middle of a conflict between the landed class and the capitalist middle class over free trade. Although Ricardo's work was written in the precise prose and methodical arguments which made economics come to be regarded as a science, he tended to favor free trade and the interests of the capitalist middle class as opposed to the landowners. He looked at wealth as a fixed aggregate which can only be divided a certain number of ways. The mass of workers will always have a level of living at the subsistence level because of what he called the "Iron Law of Wages." (He borrowed Thomas Malthus' theory (1798) that population excesses will be eliminated by natural forces). Landowners and the other economic interests will control most of the wealth. But if trade is restricted, the landowners will get most of that wealth. Rent, their income, contributes nothing to production or expansion of production. Capitalists, on the other hand produce profits which become capital for more investment. And so on. Until tariffs were ended and free trade begun, landowners would continue to dominate the economy to the national detriment. So he argued for laissez-faire policy on trade as the best means of strengthening and expanding the capitalist middle class and increasing national wealth.

Classical Liberal political theory was put forward by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), and sought to support the rise of the middle class to power. Bentham, a child prodigy (Latin at 3) who had been educated in the law and was sufficiently wealthy not to have to work, devoted himself to liberal causes and reform interests. He was interested in all sorts of things and wrote voluminously, leaving dozens of published works. (An interesting sidelight: like Shakespeare he coined many words still in use.) A quick search of his ideas will lead you to his theory of utility, known as "the greatest happiness principle." We are governed, he said, by pain and pleasure whether we like it or not:

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire, but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light. (Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation)

Perhaps the most curious thing about him was the stipulation in his will about how he was to be preserved. Literally preserved. His Auto-Icon or preserved skeleton sits today in the South Cloisters of the University College of London in a glass case.

By the early 19^th century reforms were long overdue in England. The landed owners held almost exclusive control because they alone had the vote. Bentham attacked their monopoly of power. English government had become dominated by one class and its interests; both parties, Tories and Whigs, represented a small ruling class. The remedy to abuses in the system, he said in The Theory of Legislation , was to extend representation to a greater number of society, but especially the industrial and commercial middle class. The legislature ought to contain elements whose interests were identical with those of the country because rule by a "democratic" majority would lead to "the greatest pleasure for the greatest number," a central theme in his philosophy whether applied to economics, politics or ethics. But this majority need not include the lower class because the industrial middle class would represent them, as the "wisest part of the community." Classical Liberalism sought economic and political improvements in a number of reforms: the Reform Bill of 1832; repeal of the Corn Laws restricting trade; municipal reform; and the right to hold office for Catholics and Non-Anglican Protestants.

Late Liberalism: The Creed of Millsian Liberals

Classical Liberals were in their own way progressive. But very quickly society found great problems for which they had no answers. If Liberalism were to survive, a new perspective would have to be found. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) provided that new direction.

Born in 1806 to James Mill, himself a philosopher, economist and historian and friend of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill was subjected to the most rigorous education his father could devise. At the age of 8 he was reading the Greek and Latin classics--in the original languages. Naturally he studied history, economics, and philosophy as his father's son. At 14 he studied science, mathematics and French with Jeremy Bentham's brother in France. Returning from France, he took up psychology and law, his father intending that he take up law as a profession. For some reason he did not follow this plan, a rare instance of failing to carry out his father's intentions. (He described in his Autobiography a mental crisis which overtook him at the age of 21 due to the discipline and strain of learning. No wonder!) At the age of 17 he began to work for the British East India Company which managed British interests in India. Until 1858, when the company was dissolved, Mill worked as an examiner or auditor. His later years were spent in Avignon, France where he retired on a lucrative pension. All the while, working or retired, he was writing a variety of works on all kinds of subjects. The list is staggering. Perhaps the greatest of his works was the essay, On Liberty (1859). In this work Mill sketched a new perspective for Liberalism. At his death he was buried with his wife Harriet Mill, a writer and advocate for the enfranchisement of women, in Avignon.

Mill's approach was needed. Classical Liberalism lacked answers for important problems. When the Industrial Revolution created serious social and economic problems--brutality in the factories and mines, long working hours, no safety devices or sanitary conditions for workingmen--individualism and laissez-faire had nothing to say. Private property rights came first. If an owner wanted to take better care of his workers, he could. But the idea that the state would intervene to make him do so was anathema to early liberalism. It assumed that the "invisible hand" would eventually best solve these problems and that the state could do nothing useful to solve them. Mill proposed a test to solve problems earlier liberals ignored: the General Welfare. He meant by this that freedom had to be curbed if it threatened others.

Mill stated the matter succinctly early in On Liberty:

The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle .... That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of any of their number is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good,... is not a sufficient warrant....The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

When, using this perspective, Liberals began to get legislation passed in the interest of social welfare and the extension of voting rights, Classical Liberals became conservative, defensive. But Liberal reforms to include the whole community saved Liberalism and kept England from undergoing the violence and class conflicts which plagued the continent. Indeed, without the new perspective in Liberalism, there would have been class warfare in England.

In his new perspective Mill drew upon earlier Liberalism for an emphasis on the individual. But he gave individualism a wider meaning than did Classical Liberals. His views sum up the creed of Later Liberals:

(1) Individualism is a moral ideal. Men must be treated as ends in themselves, rather than means to an end. All individuals possess dignity as human beings and this ideal is to be achieved in the actual conditions of society, not in the abstract. Mill's emphasis gave a revolutionary twist to the idea of individual moral worth.

(2) Freedom is an individual good, but it applies to more people than Classical Liberals were willing to see it applied to.

(3) Liberty is a social good; that is, it is good for society when liberty exists and bad when it does not. To silence an opinion by some kind of force robs society of that opinion, as well as harms the individual holding the opinion. In the search for truth free discussion is necessary so that all opinions can be examined and weighed before decisions are made about what is true. The clash of ideas, he said, should be like that of the battle of interests in the marketplace. The strongest win in both cases and the process keeps society alive and vigorous.

(4) The function of the state is a positive one. It cannot assume that its citizens are free, but must intervene to create or increase opportunity. It is not enough to refrain from acting or to remove restrictions on freedom. And there were no fixed limits on when the state should cease acting. The only limit is that the state should stop when it is no longer extending to more persons the conditions of a better life.

Mill broke with Classical Liberals on this view of the state's right to intervene for the greater good. He was not doctrinaire about his view. He admitted to being torn by the realization that what was good for the individual conflicted with what was good for society. He spoke in On Liberty about the "majority of one", a person's right to absolute freedom in what touched only him. But what touched others was another matter. The wealthy industrialist who insisted on his freedom and rights to exercise his power in ways that harmed the rights and freedoms of others, harmed society and should be curbed. Mill's best answer was what has come to be the classic definition of freedom: no one's freedom should infringe on the freedom of others. He assumed, as all Liberals, early and late, that men would act from enlightened self-interest and that the public was intelligent. Those ideas would be severely challenged as the 19^th gave way to the 20^th century.

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1. A person's absolute freedom in what touched only him?
2. No one's freedom should infringe on the freedom of others?
3. Change in society may be made several ways. Legislation or law suits, for example. Which way do you think best?

Liberalism and the Second Europe

Whether in the Classical or Revised stages, Liberalism affirmed all the basics beliefs and values of the Enlightenment. Unlike Conservatism, Liberalism had an optimistic view of human nature, man's intelligence, the rational scheme of things, the possibility of reforming society, and, above all, the future itself. They believed that men could make intelligent and wise choices when given the chance and that these decisions could improve human life and not make it worse. Liberals attempted to apply Enlightenment core beliefs--civil liberty, property rights, and popular sovereignty--to the industrial society which came into being in the 19^th century. They strongly emphasized individual freedom as necessary to man's fullest realization of his potential. They defended constitutional government and evolutionary change to make it more democratic. They wanted to hold government to a minimum. But this was not compatible with their belief in the worth of each human being. Thus Liberalism was split by tension in how to apply its core beliefs to actual society. The debate goes on even today.

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1.How does the debate go on today?
2.Can government successfully intervene in society to see that the worth of each individual is secured? Or does it inevitably do more damage than good? What would a Liberal say? A Conservative?