Classic Liberalism There Have Been

Classic Liberalism

There have been offered numerous definitions by scholars as to exactly what is classic liberalism.

Amy Sturgis in her 1994 essay, "The Rise, Decline, and Reemergence of Classical Liberalism," states that classical liberalism must include the following criteria:

an ethical emphasis on the individual as rights-bearer prior to the existence of any state, community, or society, the support of the right of property carried to its economic conclusion, a free-market system, the desire for a limited constitutional government to protect individuals' rights from others and from its own expansion, and the universal (global and ahistorical) applicability of these above convictions

Sturgis pp).

According to Sturgis, due to the richness and diversity of the individuals and movements within it, any attempt to chronicle the history of classical liberalism cannot do it justice (Sturgis pp).

Liberalism as a political tradition, a political philosophy and a general philosophical theory encompasses a theory of value, conception of the person and a moral theory as well as a political philosophy (Liberalism pp). Liberalism, as a political tradition, has varied in different countries (Liberalism pp). In England, it has centered on "religious toleration, government by consent, personal and, especially, economic freedom," while in France, it has been closely associated with secularism and democracy (Liberalism pp). "In the United States liberals often combine a devotion to personal liberty with an antipathy to capitalism, while the liberalism of Australia tends to be much more sympathetic to capitalism but often less enthusiastic about civil liberties" (Liberalism pp).

According to Maurice Cranston, "a liberal is a man who believes in liberty" (Liberalism pp). Liberals generally believe that humans are naturally in "a State of perfect Freedom in order their Actions...as they think fit...without asking leave, or depending on the Will of any other Man," and the burden of proof is on those "who are against liberty, who contend for any restriction or prohibition" (Liberalism pp). Thus, political authority and law must be justified since they limit the liberty of citizens (Liberalism pp). This could be called the Fundamental Liberal Principle: "freedom is normatively basic, and so the onus of justification is on those who would limit freedom. It follows from this that political authority and law must be justified, as they limit the liberty of citizens" (Liberalism pp). The social contract theory, as developed by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, is generally viewed as liberal even though the actual political prescriptions have distinctly illiberal features (Liberalism pp). Their beliefs state that in the beginning all humans are free and equal and any limitation of this freedom and equality must be justified by the social contract (Liberalism pp).

For classical liberals liberty and private property are intimately related, and from the eighteenth century until today, classical liberals have insisted that "an economic system based on private property is uniquely consistent with individual liberty, allowing each to live her life - including employing her labor and her capital - as she sees fit' (Liberalism pp). In some way classical liberals and libertarians assert that liberty and property are actually the same thing, "that all rights, including liberty rights, are forms of property...that property is itself a form of freedom" (Liberalism pp). Therefore, a market order based on private property is seen as an embodiment of freedom, that unless people have the freedom to make contracts and sell their labor, or to save their incomes and invest at will, or unless they are free to run enterprises if they have the capital, then they are not really free (Liberalism pp).

Classical liberals also believe that private property is the only effective means for the protection of liberty, "that the dispersion of power that results from a free market economy based on private property protects the liberty of subjects against encroachments by the state" (Liberalism pp).

F.A. Hayek argued that there can be no freedom of press "if the instruments of printing are under government control, no freedom of assembly if the needed rooms are so controlled, no freedom of movement if the means of transport are a government monopoly" (Liberalism pp).

As Thomas Paine wrote in 'Common Sense,' "Government even in its best state is a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one..." (Sturgis pp). Thomas Jefferson focused on creating an independent citizenry capable of maintaining the democratic republic, and he found his key in the yeoman farmer, believing "that the self-sufficient landowner possessed the ability to cultivate himself and therefore treasure his freedom" (Sturgis pp).

William Godwin, author of 'Political Justice' 1798, and hailed by many as the father of English anarchism, blended previous forms of classical liberalism into his belief in "the self-perfectibility of man and the law of progress reflected Enlightenment emphasis on reason and evolution" (Sturgis pp).

Godwin's wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, paved the way for classical liberal feminism by expanding natural rights theory to apply to women with her 1792 work 'Vindication of the Rights of Women' in which she names "women as co-inheritors of the individualist tradition with men" (Sturgis pp).

Perhaps John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873, is the single best window into classical liberalism, representing the crossroads of English, French, and German strains of thought (Sturgis pp). The son of James Mill, utilitarian and author of the first English textbook of economics, "Mill represents the English classical liberal tradition of independence by warning against the tyranny of opinion that silences other voices and calling for a form of intellectual toleration"(Sturgis pp). Mill shows sympathy for the French tradition of self-rule by creating an ethical sphere of privacy in his theory, a space for each individual that the state and the majority cannot touch, thus, Mill is advocating limitation of the state (Sturgis pp). Sturgis writes,