“Liberal”

[Chris]

Follow up...

Liberal

My GMU Econ colleague Dan Klein writes, in The Atlantic, on the history of the term “liberal.” A slice:

My research with Will Fleming finds that the Scottish historian William Robertson appears to be the most significant innovator, repeatedly using “liberal” in a political way, notably in a book published in 1769. (I presented more details in a lecture at the Ratio Institute, viewable here.) Of the Hanseatic League, for example, Robertson spoke of “the spirit and zeal with which they contended for those liberties and rights,” and how a society of merchants, “attentive only to commercial objects, could not fail of diffusing over Europe new and more liberal ideas concerning justice and order.”

Robertson’s friend and fellow Scot Adam Smith used “liberal” in a similar sense in The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. If all nations, Smith says, were to follow “the liberal system of free exportation and free importation,” then they would be like one great cosmopolitan empire, and famines would be prevented. Then he repeats the phrase: “But very few countries have entirely adopted this liberal system.”

Smith’s “liberal system” was not concerned solely with international trade. He used “liberal” to describe application of the same principles to domestic policy issues. Smith was a great opponent of restrictions in the labor market, favoring freedom of contract, and wished to see labor markets “resting on such liberal principles.”

Elsewhere, Smith draws an important contrast between regulating “the industry and commerce of a great country … upon the same model as the departments of a publick office”—that is, to direct the economy as though it were an organization—versus “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice.” In drawing such a contrast, Smith again is signaling the label “liberal” for the latter, which he favors.

Regular readers of this blog know that I never use the term “liberal” to describe people who look first to government as the “solution” to their real and imaginary problems; and I never use it to modify the word “policies” when the policies in question involve greater government control over people’s lives and property. In short, I refuse to give that noble word to people who are, in my opinion, illiberal. I might here be tilting at lexicographical windmills, but Dan’s essay gives some background for the motives of those of us who continue to call ourselves – and to regard ourselves as – liberals.

Note: The Dan Klein referred to here is the same as in the video. His full article s here: The Origin of 'Liberalism'.

[kilgram]

Well, I've not been able to watch the whole video, too much boring. But for what I've understood he mentions a strange theory that Liberalism was imported from French revolution. Well, I've always been taught that Liberalism comes from England. And the founders of this word are the philosophers of the XVII like Locke or Hobbes.

And in the from the second half of XIX century Liberalism took a new line, the Social Liberalism, and now we have Economic Liberalism (Classical) and Social Liberalism.

[Chris]

Well, I've not been able to watch the whole video, too much boring. But for what I've understood he mentions a strange theory that Liberalism was imported from French revolution. Well, I've always been taught that Liberalism comes from England. And the founders of this word are the philosophers of the XVII like Locke or Hobbes.

And in the from the second half of XIX century Liberalism took a new line, the Social Liberalism, and now we have Economic Liberalism (Classical) and Social Liberalism.

What Dan Klein argues is while it may have been used previously, it was the Scots who first used it politically.

[Chris]

From the above linked The Origin of 'Liberalism':

The term was exported to Europe and the United States as well. Some scholars have argued that the modern usage of “liberal” originated on the European continent before spreading to Britain. But using Google’s scans of books in French, Spanish, Italian, and German, we can see that usage in these countries trails Britain. I wouldn’t go so far as Arthur Herman does in the title of his splendid 2001 book, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, but it was Scots who originated the use of “liberal” in a political sense.

On the Continent, “liberal” was used, as compared to in Britain, more to denote constitutional reform and political participation, as opposed to natural liberty. Britain’s exceptional history of stable government and islandhood helped to make Smith’s focus on natural liberty possible. In his recent book Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World, Daniel Hannan quotes Smith in a 1763 lecture. After the 1707 union of England and Scotland the “dominions were then entirely surrounded by the sea … No foreign invasion was therefore much to be dreaded ...They were therefore,” Smith continued, “under no necessity of keeping up a standing army.” The Parliament shared power with the Crown, under a rule of law. “In this manner,” Smith said, “a system of liberty has been established in England before the standing army was introduced; which as it was not the case in other countries, so it has not been ever established in them.”

[Germanicus]

LIBERALISM means the desire of peoples for political liberty., i.e, to have a constitution or a parliament, to govern themselves. Where men have succeeded in obtaining the right to govern themselves there has generally followed a marked improvement in the conditions of life. The French Revolution besides teaching liberal principles to the leaders of the century also showed men how to improve their daily life. The Reform Bills in England, the revolts in Naples and Spain, the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848, Socialism, these were liberalism in action.

-The New Compendium of Modern History/George Bohman

I didnt watch the video.

edit- hey, isnt Americas real father, Englishman John Locke the Father of Liberalism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke

edit- John Locke......... you ARE the father. (:

edit- Compendium is a cool word hey.

[Chris]

The New Compendium of Modern History/George Bohman

I didnt watch the video.

The difference between the Scottish/English sense of liberalism and the French sense is two part. The Scots/English thought in terms of natural liberty, by which they meant national liberty, the liberty of the group, whereas the French thought of liberalism in terms of the individual, which allowed them to justify leveling as much as possible the social order found in traditions and institutions. The other difference is the Scots/English sought negative liberty, essentially the right to be left alone in the pursuit of happiness, the obligation of government to adhere to equal rights before the law and otherwise leave you alone; whereas the French sought positive liberty, essentially the right to political means of to get what you want, the obligation of government to make people equal and provide for happiness.