Portal:Liberalism

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Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law. Different liberals espouse various and sometimes conflicting views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support liberal democracy, private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history.

Liberalism became a distinct movement in the Age of Enlightenment, gaining popularity among Western philosophers and economists. Liberalism sought to replace the norms of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings, and traditional conservatism with representative democracy, rule of law, and equality under the law. Liberals also ended mercantilist policies, royal monopolies, and other trade barriers, instead promoting free trade and marketization. The philosopher John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism as a distinct tradition based on the social contract, arguing that each man has a natural right to life, liberty and property, and governments must not violate these rights. While the British liberal tradition emphasized expanding democracy, French liberalism emphasized rejecting authoritarianism. (Full article...)

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Liberalism, the belief in freedom, equality, democracy and human rights, is historically associated with thinkers such as John Locke and Montesquieu, and with constitutionally limiting the power of the monarch, affirming parliamentary supremacy, passing the Bill of Rights and establishing the principle of "consent of the governed". The 1776 Declaration of Independence of the United States founded the nascent republic on liberal principles without the encumbrance of hereditary aristocracy—the declaration stated that "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". A few years later, the French Revolution overthrew the hereditary aristocracy, with the slogan "liberty, equality, fraternity" and was the first state in history to grant universal male suffrage. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, first codified in 1789 in France, is a foundational document of both liberalism and human rights, itself based on the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The intellectual progress of the Enlightenment, which questioned old traditions about societies and governments, eventually coalesced into powerful revolutionary movements that toppled what the French called the Ancien Régime, the belief in absolute monarchy and established religion, especially in Europe, Latin America and North America.

William Henry of Orange in the Glorious Revolution, Thomas Jefferson in the American Revolution and Lafayette in the French Revolution used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of what they saw as tyrannical rule. The 19th century saw liberal governments established in nations across Europe, South America and North America. In this period, the dominant ideological opponent of classical liberalism was conservatism, but liberalism later survived major ideological challenges from new opponents, such as fascism and communism. Liberal government often adopted the economic beliefs espoused by Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and others, which broadly emphasized the importance of free markets and laissez-faire governance, with a minimum of interference in trade. (Full article...)

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Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1697

John Locke (/lɒk/; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of the Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". His important works include A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Two Treatises of Government (1689/90), both published anonymously, and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689/90). His writing on toleration contends that religion is a matter for the individual and that the churches are voluntary associations, ruling out religious coercion and uniformity. The ideas on the separation of church and state originated with Sir Harry Vane in Vane’s two pamphlets “Zeal Examined” in 1651 and “A Healing Question” published in 1656. His Two Treatises on Government argues for government based on the consent of the governed and the right to revolt against tyrannous government which has lost consent. The Two Treatises are believed to have influenced the language that Thomas Jefferson chose in his drafting the July 1776 Declaration of Independence during the War of American Independence.

Locke lived through the tumultuous political era of the English Civil War and Commonwealth of England after the execution of Charles I, Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, and the 1688 Glorious Revolution. These experiences affected his political thinking and life choices. During the Interregnum, Locke won a place at Christ Church, Oxford after attending the prestigious Westminster School. He spent 15 years at Oxford, first as a student, then as a tutor, pursuing medical and other scientific interests in a circle of friends. He is also listed as a shareholder with the “Royal Company of Adventures Trading to Africa” founded by the Duke of York and King Charles II who traded in slaves beginning in 1663 per the charter of the company. In 1666, Locke became an associate of Lord Shaftesbury, a key figure in English political life after the Restoration (1660), and Locke was appointed to governmental posts at Shaftesbury's recommendation. Locke was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (1668). When Shaftesbury fell from royal favour and died shortly thereafter, Locke went into political exile for five years in the Netherlands (1683–85). There he wrote some of his most important works. During this period, he gained the patronage of Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke. Locke returned to England from exile, accompanying Queen Mary II in 1689. He published three of his most notable works soon after his return. He served as a Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, then retired from public life due to ill health. For the last fourteen years of his life, he lived in the household of Sir Francis Masham and his wife, philosopher Lady Masham, whom Locke had known since she was a young woman. (Full article...)

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Are there no other contracts which, less obviously perhaps but really, are open to the same objection? In the first place, let us consider contracts affecting labour. Labour, the economist tells us, is a commodity exchangeable like other commodities. This is in a certain sense true, but it is a commodity which attaches in a peculiar manner to the person of man. Hence restrictions may need to be placed on the sale of this commodity which would be unnecessary in other cases, in order to prevent labour from being sold under conditions which make it impossible for the person selling it ever to become a free contributor to social good in any form. This is most plainly the case when a man bargains to work under conditions fatal to health, e.g. in an unventilated factory. Every injury to the health of the individual is, so far as it goes, a public injury. It is an impediment to the general freedom; so much deduction from our power, as members of society, to make the best of ourselves. Society is, therefore, plainly within its right when it limits freedom of contract for the sale of labour, so far as is done by our laws for the sanitary regulations of factories, workshops, and mines. . . .Its application to compulsory education may not be quite so obvious, but it will appear on a little reflection. Without a command of certain elementary arts and knowledge, the individual in modern society is as effectually crippled as by the loss of a limb or a broken constitution. He is not free to develop his faculties. With a view to securing such freedom among its members it is as certainly within the province of the state to prevent children from growing up in that kind of ignorance which practically excludes them from a free career in life, as it is within its province to require the sort of building and drainage necessary for public health.

Our modern legislation then with reference to labour, and education, and health, involving as it does manifold interference with freedom of contract, is justified on the ground that it is the business of the state, not indeed directly to promote moral goodness, for that, from the very nature of moral goodness, it cannot do, but to maintain the conditions without which a free exercise of the human faculties is impossible. . . .

Now we shall probably all agree that a society in which the public health was duly protected, and necessary education duly provided for, by the spontaneous action of individuals, was in a higher condition than one in which the compulsion of law was needed to secure these ends. But we must take men as we find them. Until such a condition of society is reached, it is the business of the state to take the best security it can for the young citizens growing up in such health and with so much knowledge as is necessary for their real freedom.

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— Thomas Hill Green, Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract, 1861.

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General images

The following are images from various liberalism-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Benjamin Constant, a Franco-Swiss political activist and theorist (from Liberalism)
Image 2GDP per capita in Chile and Latin America 1950–2010 (time under Pinochet highlighted) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 3U.S. President Bush, Canadian PM Mulroney, and Mexican President Salinas participate in the ceremonies to sign the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). (from Neoliberalism)
Image 4The US federal minimum wage if it had kept pace with productivity compared to the actual wage (from Neoliberalism)
Image 5T. H. Green, an influential liberal philosopher who established in Prolegomena to Ethics (1884) the first major foundations for what later became known as positive liberty and in a few years, his ideas became the official policy of the Liberal Party in Britain, precipitating the rise of social liberalism and the modern welfare state (from Liberalism)
Image 6Pamphlet calling for a protest of economic policy in 1983 following the economic crisis (from Neoliberalism)
Image 7As a liberal nationalist, K. J. Ståhlberg (1865–1952), the President of Finland, anchored the state in liberal democracy, guarded the fragile germ of the rule of law, and embarked on internal reforms. (from Liberalism)
Image 8Ludwig Erhard (from Neoliberalism)
Image 9United States incarceration rate per 100,000 population, 1925–2014 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 10Franklin D. Roosevelt (from Liberalism)
Image 11Julius Faucher (from Liberalism)
Image 12Unemployment in Chile and South America (1980–1990) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 13Per capita income during the Great Depression (from Neoliberalism)
Image 14The Great Depression, with its periods of worldwide economic hardship, formed the backdrop against which the Keynesian Revolution took place (the image is Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depiction of destitute pea-pickers in California, taken in March 1936). (from Liberalism)
Image 15Ronald Reagan (left) and Margaret Thatcher (right) were responsible for the popularisation of Neoliberalism. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 16Chilean (orange) and average Latin American (blue) rates of growth of GDP (1971–2007) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 17The European Union–Mercosur free trade agreement, which would form one of the world's largest free trade areas, has been denounced by environmental activists and indigenous rights campaigners. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 18Mary Wollstonecraft, widely regarded as the pioneer of liberal feminism (from Liberalism)
Image 19The iconic painting Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, a tableau of the July Revolution in 1830 (from Liberalism)
Image 20Raif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian writer and the creator of the website Free Saudi Liberals, who was sentenced to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for "insulting Islam" in 2014 (from Liberalism)
Image 21Sismondi, who wrote the first critique of the free market from a liberal perspective in 1819 (from Liberalism)
Image 22Builders in West Berlin, 1952 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 23Gustave de Molinari (from Liberalism)
Image 24The 2017–2018 Russian protests were organized by Russia's liberal opposition. (from Liberalism)
Image 25Member nations of the International Monetary Fund (from Neoliberalism)
Image 26Wealth inequality in the United States increased from 1989 to 2013. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 27John Locke was the first to develop a liberal philosophy, including the right to private property and the consent of the governed. (from Liberalism)
Image 28John Milton's Areopagitica (1644) argued for the importance of freedom of speech. (from Liberalism)
Image 29Madame de Staël (from Liberalism)
Image 30Montesquieu, who argued for the separation of the powers of government (from Liberalism)
Image 31John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists of modern times and whose ideas, which are still widely felt, formalized modern liberal economic policy (from Liberalism)
Image 32John Stuart Mill, whose On Liberty greatly influenced 19th-century liberalism (from Liberalism)
Image 33Friedrich Hayek (from Neoliberalism)
Image 34Execution of José María de Torrijos y Uriarte and his men in 1831 as Spanish King Ferdinand VII took repressive measures against the liberal forces in his country (from Liberalism)
Image 35Monument to the liberals of the 19th century in Agra del Orzán neighborhood, La Coruña, Galicia (Spain) (from Liberalism)