![]() ![]() Nor can it escape a heritage of Protestant self-scrutiny, self-reliance, and self-salvation. When liberalism as a distinctive modern politics or self-designated ideological current begins to emerge in America-first through the high-minded reforming individualism of Edward Godkin, editor of the Nation during the 1880s and 1890s, and then through the socialnationalist progressivism of Herbert Croly, editor of the New Republic when it was founded in 1914-it becomes clear that it cannot escape a heritage of native individualism, utopianism, and “consciencepolitics.” Nor can it escape the paradisial vision that is deeply lodged in the American imagination, going back to Emerson and Thoreau, and further back, perhaps, to the Puritans. Perhaps because the assumptions of a liberal polity were so widely shared in 19th-century America (the slaveocracy apart), “liberal” as a term of political designation can hardly be found in its writings. In America, sometimes to the bewilderment of Europeans, liberalism has repeatedly taken on indigenous traits that render it, at one extreme, virtually asocial and anarchic and, at the other extreme, virtually chiliastic and authoritarian.At its best, this social liberalism has also viewed itself as strictly committed to the political liberalism of #2 above. Especially in 20th-century America but also in Europe, liberalism has come to signify movements of social reform seeking to “humanize” industrial-capitalist society, usually on the premise that this could be done sufficiently or satisfactorily without having to resort to radical/ socialist measures-in current shorthand: the welfare state.Rising from the lowlands of interest to the highlands of value, this view of liberalism proposes a commitment to “formal” freedoms-speech, assembly, press, etc.-so that in principle, as sometimes in practice, liberalism need have no necessary connection with, or dependence upon, any particular way of organizing the economy. Both in Europe and America, liberalism has also been seen as a system of beliefs stressing such political freedoms as those specified in the U.S.1 This, roughly, is what liberalism has signified in Marxist literature, starting with Marx’s articles for the Rheinische Zeitung and extending through the polemics of Kautsky, Bernstein, and Luxemburg. Social life came to be seen as a field in which an equilibrium of desired goods could be realized if individuals were left free to pursue their interests. Especially in Europe, liberalism has signifed those movements and currents of opinion that arose toward the end of the 18th century, seeking to loosen the constraints traditional societies had imposed on the commercial classes and proposing modes of government in which the political and economic behavior of individuals would be subjected to a minimum of regulation.In the socialist literature, though not there alone, liberalism has taken on at least the following roles and meanings: And this for two reasons: first, that liberalism is our main interest today and second, that since a surplus of variables can paralyze analysis (eight kinds of socialism matched against six of liberalism yield how many combinations/ confrontations?), I would justify taking one’s sights from a more-or-less fixed position as a way of grasping a range of shifting phenomena. But in talking about liberalism I shall be readier to acknowledge the complexities and confusions of historical actuality. I shall assume that with regard to liberalism there has been some coherence of outlook among the various shades of socialist (and Marxist) opinion. Socialists, who are they? and liberalism, what is it? I shall choose here to signify as socialist those thinkers and spokesmen who cannot be faulted as tender toward authoritarian regimes: I shall exclude Communists, Maoists, Castroites, as well as their hybrids, cousins, and reticent wooers. What I propose to do here is to construct a synthesis, necessarily open to the charge that it is ahistorical, of the criticisms socialists have traditionally leveled against liberalism, and then to offer some remarks about possible future relations. The socialist criticisms of liberalism, though familiar enough in their general features, appear in the literature mainly through occasional passages, unquestioned references, rude dismissals, and, during the last few decades, a few wistful beckonings for reconciliation. ![]() It will surprise none of my readers to learn that after a reasonably diligent search I have not been able to find a serious attempt to bring together systematically the usual socialist criticisms of liberalism. But nor, perhaps, are they completely irreconcilable. Debates between socialists and liberals are not new. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |