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Liberalism Divisions - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Nature of modern economics and society meant individuals were increasingly subject to sociology-economic forces beyond their control.
      - These forces made it impossible for affected individuals to seek self-determination and self-realisation even though they might not have caused the socio-economic problems.
  - - - Guarantee the the equality of opportunity necessary to enable individual freedom.
      - Would require some individuals to sacrifice more of their earnings to the state in the form of progressive taxation, they could be persuaded it was for the better
        
        Remained indifferent to to inequality of outcome, for many liberal as was the inevitable side effect of individual freedom.
        
        Priority was to ameliorate socioeconomic condition of society’s most deprived members and thus enable them to exploit their individual potential and acheive control of their lives.
    - - Evident in the adoption of Keynesian economics in post-war consensus.
      - Economic depression convinced Keynes that neither individual freedom nor the survival of capitalist economies and constituional states were served by laissez-faire capitalism.
        
        Mass unemployment not only deprived millions of their individual freedom but paved the way for utterly illiberal doctrines such as fascism and communism.
        
        So state must constantly steer the economy through state directed capitalism.
  - - - Liberal demands for reform in the UK include the adoption of a codified constitution, devolution of power and electoral reform.
    - - Modern liberals show little interest in direct democracy fearing referendums and intitiatives threaten the ‘tyranny of the majority’ seeming willingly to dilute the values of a representative democracy to protect liberal values.
      - Represented in widespread enthusiasm for supranational bodies like the EU.
        
        Referendum an unfortunate example of the tyranny of the majority, a vindication of Mill’s argument that such decisions were best left to he more liberally minded parliament.
  - - - Given the acceptance of positive liberty and an enlarged state, modern liberals argued solutions lay in further legislation, regulation and ‘positive discrimination’ (affirmative action).
        
        Involved the state correcting historical imbalance by discriminating in favour of previously discriminated against groups to secure a better equality of opportunity.
        
        Associated with President Kennedy’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which required mananagers to take affirmative action in respect of hiring employees from racial minorities.
        
        In the UK, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 criminalised forms of negative discrimination against women.
      - Insistence that such reforms were perfectly consistent with liberal tradition, citing Mill’s harm principle.
        
        Laws criminalising sexual discrimination were designed to merely to prevent some female individuals having their freedoms harmed by others .
        
        Accompanying agencies were still consistent with the protection and advancement of natural rights.
- - - - Neoliberals have thus re-advertised the merits of negative freedom and a minimal state
  - - - Seen as reactionary not progressive
      - Key role in the development of New Right conservatism.
- - - - Universal suffrage must be preceded by universal education, promoting developmental individualism.
      - Advancement of of individual potential so as to produce a liberal consensus in society which would in turn protect tolerance, reason and individualism.
        
        A vote would be withheld from the illiterate and unschooled, those with a university education would receive more than one vote.
    - - Could allow for Bentham’s extension of utilitarianism, encouraging ordinary citizens to consider and aggregate everyone’s interests when forming a poltical judgement.
      - Methods on how this would be achieved are vague.
- - - - Locke’s philosophy became associated with England’s Glorious Revolution in 1688 duly secured constituional governemtn and the end of concentrated political power.
      - Government by consent
      - Idea of rationalism was far from firmly accepted in the 18th century or that society should be geared to maximise individual freedom.
      - Wollstonecraft argued the treatment of women during this period was a general affront to reason and a particular affront to indivdual liberty
        
        Opposed to women developing their individual potentional, Hanoverian society contrived to ‘keep women in a ‘state of listless activity and stupid acquiescence’
        
        These ideas were considered dangerously radical.
    - - Involves individuals being left alone to pursue their destiny-any attempt to interfere with individual actions may therefore be judged an infringement of liberty.
      - Complements belief that individuals were potentially autonomous, atomistic and self-reliant.
    - - Given that liberty was seen as the absence of restraint, governments should not be limited in terms of how they could act, but also limited in terms of what they would do.
      - Thomas Jefferson
        ’The government that is best is that which governs least’
      - Strengthens liberalism’s faith in the dispersal of political power.
    - - Adam Smith argued that capitalism had a limitless capacity to enrich society and the individuals within it (trickle down).
      - Advocated against tariffs nand duties which had protected the spread of ‘free trade’
  - - - Society had become more industrialised , worked in urban environments and individuals had a growing sense of class consciousness.
      - Socialism and democracy were growing ideologies.
    - - He acknowledged that this could produce more clashes, so suggested state would need to be more proactive.
      - ‘Greatest happiness of the greatest number’ to inform legislation and government policy.
      - More likely if the governemtn were elected by and accountable to the ‘greatest number’ of voters.
    - - Self-reliance was perfectly feasible for most individuals.
      - This was made harder by industrialisation , yet argued in seeking to overcome the new obstacles , indivduals would merely be challenged more and become more developed.