Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Michael Freeden Read Free Book Online

humanity at large. It suggested that human progress and improvement were inherent to social life. It also normalized human cooperation as a biological imperative. All those beliefs were now seemingly supported by the kind of scientific evidence liberals of all generations had always sought.
    Third, and connected to the cooperative evolutionary principle, thinkers such as L.T. Hobhouse and J.A. Hobson—the two leading intellectuals of what came to be known as the new liberalism—likened a social entity to a living organism. The main effect of that analogy was to emphasize the close interrelationship and interdependence among members of a society, suggesting that they could not survive on their own without the support of others. Why then was that a liberal argument, considering that the energetic and assertive individual had been so central to that ideology? After all, organic theories of society often imply that the whole is more important than individual parts, positing the illiberal message of the sacrifice of individual good for social good. Hobson, in particular, cleverly inverted that implication. A living body was only healthy when every one of its parts was healthy. It was therefore in the joint interest of both individuals and society to cultivate personal flourishing. That form of liberal organicism produced the most striking instance of the combination of the individual and the social tendencies within liberalism and, as we shall see in Chapter 3 , had crucial political and institutional consequences for that ideology in the 20th century.
    Fourth, liberal reformers evinced a growing sensitivity to the social consequences of the industrial revolution. They began to realize that bestowing political rights, such as the right to vote, to liberty, or to protection from harm, was no longer adequate to safeguard the well-being of a nation. The gradual granting of political rights to the working class had given them a voice which touched the hearts of middle class social reformers. As more and more people moved to the cities, the abject conditions of poverty suffered by the dispossessed could not be justified. Terrible housing conditions, periodical unemployment, sickness, and the lack of education disabled many people from enjoying their newly gained right to representation, which proved to be nominal rather than real. Liberals now argued that political rights had to be supplemented by social rights in order for individuals to achieve full social membership and citizenship. Tellingly, they saw that as an extension of the idea of liberty—liberty not only from tyranny and harm by others, but from avoidable and debilitating deprivation.

Liberalism in America: two instances
    In the United States, early 20th century progressivism developed a reformist impetus of its own, though with notable overlaps with British left-liberalism. Its supporters displayed an energetic activism focusing on the removal of municipal corruption and on a deepening of the democracy, efficiency, and accountability of governments. They also backed trust-busting in order to expand the equal opportunities for individuals and reduce concentrations of capital that were hampering the growth of competitive markets. Separately, the intellectual movement around the influential weekly, the New Republic —an outlet for progressive liberals such as Herbert Croly (1869–1930), Walter Weyl (1873–1919), and Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)—explored the links between liberty and community, a rare theme in American liberal discourse. Appealing to American conceptions of the ‘people’ as a whole, Croly developed an organic view of the national interest similar to that of the British new liberals. The philosopher John Dewey, as will be noted in Chapter 5 , took some of those ideas forward. However, in Croly’s thinking the idea of a nation was allotted a greater role. He wrote: ‘American nationality has been created by virtue of the binding attempt to realize