Understanding the Political Ideology of Liberalism
What is Liberalism? Do we understand its functions, from its earliest history to its modernised counterpart? Explaining its core embodiments, its importance of the individual, and the understanding of Liberalism to its ideological form? Well… This is what this article on Political Liberalism is all about!
Liberalism; it’s a difficult ideology to get your head around from a first glance towards the topic, yet its core embodiments, importance’s and functions can be seen within each and every individual with a natural instinct to be who they want to be instead of controlled by the state at all times, relentless following of a higher government because of just that, they are higher ‘so they know what’s best.’ I have learnt, and during this essay, you will learn that perhaps the ideologies of Liberalism calls to many of us without us actually knowing of it. Luckily, I will not be taking your entire time up during this essay as I will only be covering four points to liberalism, the main ideological structures behind it: Rationalism; Individual Stress; Negative and a touch on Positive freedom; and finally, the importance of a social contract; which will perhaps speak larger to anyone who has no yet idea upon the ideological workings of Liberalism.
As spoken about previously, Liberalism encompasses many points and structures that are alike to most law-biding individuals in everyday life; though they may not be labelling themselves as Liberalistic thinkers, Liberalism is such a prominent and strong ideology; you will find yourself practicing it. Let’s consider our first point, a structure widely followed by most; we all agree or at least can understand that Humans are reasonable creatures, capable of making a logical and methodical pathway of thinking and feeling? This is a core embodiment in Liberalism, known as Rationalism. Human beings are rational, and therefore Human nature is determined through a general rational interest (John Locke [1690] individuals are shaped by their own rational interests) instead of that of irrational emotions and prejudices that someone without a rational mind may follow. All rational human beings are capable of making their own decisions that are of a particular interest that follow a natural route, similar to saying that we are “governed by reason.” Rationalism is such an important factor in the ideology of liberalism and to its labelled liberal followers because it expressively promotes a view that we are free to choose our own path in life regardless of what our general society would consider as the natural societal ‘norms.’ We have all founded a societal norm during our lives; whether old or young, it makes no difference. We all, at one point in our lives or in our futures will constrain ourselves to a societal norm — or what is considered acceptable within the society for which we grow up in or where we eventually decide to live; what Liberalism tells us is that instead of constraining ourselves to societal norms (So long as it is legal and acceptable to do so), we should be free to choose our own specific pathway in life regardless of anyone else’s views — and this is because we are Rational thinkers, rational enough to consider interest over ‘emotion and prejudices.’ To decide our own specific pathway in life can be difficult at times, and we can show this in this situation by using minority groups in the real world; such as Political Dissidents (Actively challenging an already established political system) or the LGBTQ+ Community, who for years, have struggled ‘rationally’ following their individual interests avoiding societal norms; for which is legal and acceptable to do so. Taking this view of the LGBTQ+ community and applying it to the situation of Liberalism and rational interest, we agree that Human Nature dictates as told, a “Government by Reason” of one’s self, so as to why minority groups such as the LGBTQ+ community find it difficult to express completely their own free-will to do as what they wish; it is completely unacceptable to tolerate a behaviour in which disengages the ability for a community such as the one spoken, to practice their free-will and freedoms of movement and happiness in the way that they wish to practice it. For those of you who are not a part of the minority community; would it be okay to not allow your free-will to hold your husband or wife’s hand in the street because it is not societally correct to do so in front of others? The rights to rationally do what oneself wishes to do so is the existence and the importance to human happiness during our period of life from birth to death; as proven by Aristotle’s “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence” which ties together the previous five points we have detailed above. What Aristotle is saying as a liberal embodiment is the empowerment of the individual — which we will come more in detail with later on in this essay. Empowering the individual to think and feel in the freedoms of Human Nature without societal backlashes and constraints. Liberty. The whole concept of the working Rational thinking for mankind can be summed up with the ideas of Liberty, which we can pin to a Liberal Freedom Thinker John Stuart Mill, “The Liberty of the individual must be this far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people” or in other words, must not undermine others. In this liberal liberty, as spoken about before, if it is legal and acceptable to do so, it is correct in assuming that “governed by reason” we are free to choose our path in life regardless of societal norms — however, what John Stuart Mill introduced here provides a limit or barrier to this; where it is acceptable to complete liberal liberty so long as it does not upset the way of a rational society / affects the lives of others; whether they follow the ideals of Liberalism or not.
With a now completed ideal of Liberal Rationalism, we can now tie it down with a further, more complicated embodiment of Liberalism… Liberty. Briefly touched at the end of the stated above argument, Liberty is the ideal that each and every free thinker with a rational mind to do as he pleases in which does not disturb the balance of a general society (from John Stuart Mill), is entitled to a free living of life, happiness and movement — classified overall as Human Liberty. However, it is not as simple as an overall encompassing view of Liberty. There are two sections to Liberty that we must address; Positive and Negative Liberty or Positive a Negative Freedom. However, for this we will only be focusing on Negative Liberty touching only very briefly on the ideals of a Positive Liberty. Negative Liberty — or the freedom from something is what demands a limited role for the state. Similar to the ideas of Liberal Rationalism in expression of free-will, Negative Liberty reflects the absence of barriers and constraints signalled by Isiah Berlin [1969] “We are Masters of our own destiny” — Conceptualising Freedom. The ideas of the state not intervening in our individual freedoms is paramount to securing a Liberal State. When a government tampers with individual liberty, then the state is removing the ability of rationality and altogether, the ideas of individual freedom to happiness, movement and our “own destiny.” T.H. Green recognised in a non-utopian ideal that state laws alone cannot make people the way in which they should be, but they can at least enable individuals to make themselves good — and this non-utopian view that the state can introduce laws that help us make a choice to be good, is the way of the state interfering in individual liberty by giving us freedom to make that choice on our liberty — so in simple terms, the state is not taking away liberty by their own choice, they are leaving it up to those who live within the state that they may follow their own roads and paths to their own freedoms, but they must not step past state made laws that create a barrier to individual freedom, as breaking these would allow the satisfaction for that individual freedom to be revoked; and this is why, specifically thinking in a European directive, justice systems exist — to create a barrier to the freedoms of those that accept the rules. Freedom is only freedom if it goes undisturbed in the state. We can prove that a state that provides our individual welfare and needs from cradle to grave ultimately has the ability to take liberty away from us — an unencumbered freedom. This is why individual rational freedom and liberty is so important — because we are to have the freedom of choice over our lives, and the way in which we live them in constraint under the social contract between the state and the individual that lives within it.
Within Liberty, we must also encompass the Negative Freedom in the Economy. The economy in a state is an extremely important embodiment within Liberal states, and there are two ways of briefly classifying the Economy; through Classic Liberals and Social Liberals (Classic and Modern.) Classic Liberals; as founded in by the Austrian School of Economists extol the virtues of Laissez-Faire (A policy of leaving things to take their own course) economics — The role of the state must therefore be limited. This, in simple, provides the ideas that the economy within Liberty should be limited, just as that of the state and individual liberties, to allow a smooth running of the free-market and upholding of legal contracts fulfilled in an individual choice by the free-will of residents of a state. However, Social Liberals would look to a more Modern Welfare State as introduced by William Beveridge in 1942 ‘Belief that the most vulnerable within society require a degree of state assistance,” which in turn, is the belief that state interference is sometimes a necessity in order to allow a freedom of people. To allow for a liberty. There are no right or wrong answers between the two theorists of the economy, and it is up to the freedom of the individual such as yourselves to decide which one would be more suited — as freedom of the individual is paramount to the freedom of the state to govern. “A starving man is not free.”
As you can most likely already tell, individual liberty is the most important part of liberalism as I have mentioned it in almost every proposed viewpoint, and that is because it is. Liberalism stresses profoundly above all the importance of the individual, or a primary focus on the individual themselves, such as yourself. This is because during the Feudal Medieval times between the 9th and 15th Centuries, very little importance was placed upon the individual, specifically very little, if any, importance of the individual for Women who were deemed the lesser gender to men in the period between the 9th and 15th century and far beyond that, even to this day (For which arose the ideas of Feminism — followed in Liberalism; the ideals of Equality — first founded within the writings of Liberal Thinker Wollstonecraft.) Little importance was placed on the individual during this period due to the view of the “divine right of kings” led by Religion, that a king (A state) would govern their people however they wished because they were placed to govern by God, and those that did not follow could either die or be banished to survive on their own without the protection of the state. Villages, Families and Social classes during this time were more important that individual liberty, and profoundly in the blindness towards “Government by Rationality and Reason.” Liberty during the Feudal Medieval times where liberalism was not followed, was the lowest of any state concern. Then there came about a change to the reasons of feudalism, the Free Market introduced into the state by capitalist interests — which, within Liberalism as a whole is an important factor in coming to terms with the ideology. The Free Market gave people a choice, it gave them individuality that you and I actively participate in each and every day; coinciding with the encouragement of self-reliance in thinking for one’s self, the free market was a dramatic change to the ideals of Feudal Medieval States. Fortunately, the ideals of the Free-Market State where anyone and everyone became entitled to purchase land (Land Ownership), and much more in regards to Capitalist view points; Ideas and theories stemmed from the Free Market as a result; Such as the idea of “Natural Rights” and the theory that people were as ‘ends in themselves’ by the German Philosopher Immanuel Kant.
As we have established throughout, the ideas of Liberalism are that everyone, no matter where from is entitled to think and feel in the freedoms and customs of the state in a social contract with one another, protecting one another by agreement and volunteering. The ideas brought about by the Free-Market developed Liberalism to what it is today; in which coincides with the theory I proposed to you at the beginning, that we as natural human beings with a rational interest ‘governed by reason’ with freedoms to movement and happiness corresponded generously with Aristotle, follow blindly to many of the points and embodiments of liberalism without noticing it.
Following this, the production of the Capitalist free-market also developed the differentiation between individuals, in that we are not all the same, nor are we equal; we are all manifestly different — with unique tastes and characters stemming from the tolerance / toleration of different ideas, views and followings, best pronounced in French Thinkers Voltaire’s biography by his author Evelyn Beatrice Hall: “I detest what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” which ultimately means that, because we are unique in our ways, that none of us are the same; to be at the toleration of others is to be at the liberalisms stress of the individual in believing what they independently and rationally choose to believe. There are two ways to interpret liberal views on individualism, and that, similarly to Liberty and Negative freedom, can be founded through Classic Liberals and Modern Liberals. With Classical Liberals, the ideas of individualism centre around Egotistical Individualism (Similar to what you and I would consider as 20th Century Upper Class thinking); which involves individuals looking after their own interests ahead of any kind of collective interest, so in short for you and I to understand; it is the view that individuals should look after themselves more so than a collective or group interest; perhaps this can be best proven by a Conservative speech by Margaret Thatcher in the 1987 Interview for “Women’s Own” where she directly addressed the belief that Society as a collective did not exist, and that it was rational and important to focus upon the ideals of one’s own interest over others. In contrast to this view point, Modern Liberals support a different approach founded on Developmental Individualism, or a style of individualism that allows the freedom to grow and develop in a way that respectively fulfils a personal individual goal of each person to their full potential; and this further introduces the ideas of Tolerance as mentioned before the viewpoints of Classical and Modern Liberals. Most Modern liberals (and if you consider yourself as a modern liberal) will find that some state intervention is going to be needed, unlike egotistical individualism which pronounces profoundly that state intervention on the individual will remove individual liberty, modern liberals find state intervention sometimes applicable and a necessity to have, as “a starving man is not a free man.” And therefore, some state intervention will be necessary. We can link this idea of modern liberal thinking of the individual to the previously stated quotation by Evelyn Beatrice Hall.
You now have the information to make a concise judgement on your understanding of Liberalism, however, with the introduction to individualism pronounced within all 3 previous embodiments; Negative Liberty, Individual stress and Rationalism, we must introduce our last point to fully comprehend Liberalism, and that is the ideas of a natural and opportunistic state embodied by a social contract between the State (Government) and the people who reside in it. Introduced to us by Thomas Paine, the social contract operated by every liberal state “is the only mode in which governments have the right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.” Moreover, the first ideas of the social contract arose from the now considered ‘father of liberalism,’ John Locke (1690) who argued that individuals must consent to being governed, and only with that consent by the residents of the state, can the government rule and preside over them. There must be a formal interest, a rational interest perhaps, by each side of the party in contract. The state needs residents in order to form a liberal consensual government, and the people need the protection of their naturally given rights and freedoms of individualism and liberty by the government. The social contract works only if both sides are within and uphold the agreement. However, unlike contracts that perhaps yourself and I know of, consent in the form of the social governing contract is tacit; and is not to be formally expressed; but will exist and will be given to the government. Before government by state, human beings were not free, nor was their liberty protected. Without the state, human beings are ungoverned but will still follow what we would now consider as ‘community rules’ that villages and settlements would follow. Individuals as introduced to you are governed by their own rational interests, so a person who leaves his state of nature where no social contract between a government and its people existed will be moving to a state with a social contract in order to protect their individual rights where they were not available before; only agents of the state are powerful enough to provide the required level of protection against that which threatens ones on liberty; such as that without the social contract. With this individual and rational interest in entering a contracted state between government and people, the individual is looking to protect their liberty from any threats that may be made against it, so therefore, offering consent to the state will actually strengthen the liberty of the individual, and not impair it.
The best way to view the two-way social contract is to look at your justice system that is incorporated into your state. Your justice system has been established to punish those who break the law in some way, to remove the liberty (briefly according to the offence in law for which was broken) to protect the liberty and individual natural rights of others. This is the state upholding their side of the contract; keeping the natural rights of the individual safe by punishing the offender that posed a threat to it. However, the extent to which the state should be involved as introduced before must be limited. Without the limitation of the state as to what they can and cannot do is the only way to protect yours and everyone else’s liberties and freedom as founded within the Unencumbered self “A state that provides for our welfare needs from cradle to grave ultimately has the ability to take that liberty away from us.” If the state exceeded this power, it would be in violation of the agreed social contract allowing individuals such as you and I to rightly withdraw their consent from the state, returning to a non-contractual unfree environment predating the societal contract. This is why it is so important for a social contract to be upheld, as the example above, the law, is a prerequisite of freedom itself: “Where there are no laws that exist, man has no freedom.” Fortunately, this contract between the state and the people can best be seen and inscribed into the American Declaration of Independence where it offers the social contract between its people and the Governing states.
Authority should come from below, not above. The role and the legitimacy of the state must entirely be based upon the agreement of the people and the state through the social contract. This is the basic translation of the Lockean Theory of the social contract within the concept of Liberalism.
Coming to the conclusion of this overview of the main embodiments of the ideological concept of Liberalism, What it is, given its functions, from its earliest history to its modernised counterpart, explaining its core embodiments, its importance of the individual, and the understanding of Liberalism to its ideological form, we can safely conclude that Liberalism as a whole is about the safety and security of a rational persons interests, enabling them to exercise their own rational interests over emotions and prejudices, their freedoms to movement and happiness that is not inhibiting of anyone else’s freedom or rational interest (Toleration) and follows in the voluntary social contract between the state in which they follow in order to retain their freedoms and fully expressed free-will of the individual. This is what Liberalism is, broken down from everything we have gone through. It’s a difficult concept to interpret and understand, yet we as natural and rational human beings; without the knowledge of following liberal views, follow them ever still. We each know right from wrong, and some would argue we need not be taught right from wrong because we are born with the natural and rational knowledge that the right is the only free thinking and rational way above the wrong — and there are studies to produce this outcome that we are born with a natural knowledge of protecting our liberty and our will by choice of the right.
