Brexit. Trump. Meloni. Le Pen. Liberalism is struggling — and no wonder. Since neoliberalism emerged triumphant in the Eighties, and certainly since the Financial Crisis ravaged communities from Dundee to Delaware, sensible centrists have dramatically failed to improve the lives of working people. Shorn of any positive economic vision, they’ve instead retreated to vague calls for democracy or equality, even as authoritarians loudly proclaim a better and more xenophobic tomorrow.
If it’s to survive the century, then, liberalism must rekindle a sense of hope, one that dovetails respect for institutions with a politics of plenty. I believe the solution can be found in two words: liberal socialism.
For some, the term’s an oxymoron. Many classical and neoliberals see liberalism as doggedly committed to unbridled capitalism, with the economist Ludwig von Mises summarising the ideology as representing “private ownership of the means of production”. Many on the Left would surely agree. For socialists, isn’t liberalism the “bourgeois” ideology par excellence, serving as an intellectual defence of capital ownership and worker exploitation?
In fact, liberalism is a much more dynamic, complex family of creeds than these reductive labels suggest: while thinkers such as von Mises were quick to equate capitalism and liberalism, there’s always been an economically progressive strain to liberal thinking too. For these self-proclaimed liberal socialists, redistribution isn’t simply preferable — but actually the only way of securing liberal goals. Put it like this: domination by bosses is no less oppressive because it happens in the market and is sanctioned by the state.
Two of the first thinkers to develop these ideas were Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft. In his seminal book Rights of Man, and in pamphlets such as Agrarian Justice, Paine argued that property was a social rather than a natural institution. This meant that the rich owed society a debt for their property, a debt which could be paid through heavy taxes and fund a lively proto-welfare state.
Wollstonecraft is, of course, most famous for her stirring arguments for women’s equality in A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Less remembered, though, is her acid claim in the same work that from “respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind.” From there, Wollstonecraft went on to argue that both the aristocratic rich and the emerging capitalist class could be compared to a fungus growing upon society, one which distorts its moral virtues through avarice and greed.
Wollstonecraft and Paine were important precursors. But it was really John Stuart Mill who developed a mature form of liberal socialism. Mill is best remembered today for his uncompromising defence of personal liberty. Less familiar are his innovative economic arguments for workplace democracy.
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SubscribeWhen you keep the proceeds of your labour, and choose to then use it as you will, you are a free man. If someone else takes the proceeds of your labour, and it is they that choose how and who benefits, you are a slave.
Of course there is a degree to which people must contribute towards society as a whole, if only as insurance against injury, bad luck, ill health, or defence against someone attacking them.
So it’s a sliding scale, between how much of the proceeds of your labour you keep, and how much you contribute to society. That latter should be the minimum necessary to preserve the situation where you keep the proceeds fo your labour. To argue that an individual required to surrender more of his or her labour to the State would thereby be living in a more ‘liberal’ (free) society requires ‘liberal’ to mean something that it literally doesn’t.
It wouldn’t be the first word to suffer that fate, but it’s a particularly important one to defend.
If you don’t give your labour to government it doesn’t disappear, the people who do the labour decide what to do with it.
South of the border, Bernie Sanders and the “Squad” have div > p > a”> div > p > a”>done much to update a liberal style of socialism for new generations
And yet the source cited for this indicates something a bit more nuanced about the place of socialism in society,
“Overall, there has been a small uptick in the percentage of Americans with a favorable view of socialism “
While perceptions of capitalism have changed rapidly among young adults, perceptions of socialism have changed more incrementally among all age groups. Slightly fewer young adults now than in 2019 say they have a positive view of socialism (51% now vs. 55% in 2019). But that dip is offset by slight increases in the number of adults ages 35-64 and 65+ who say they have a favorable view of socialism.
Yes, people have lost faith in Capitalism, but that doesn’t mean that they’re swinging towards socialism. Whatever happens they’re smart enough to work things out. They want improvements but they don’t want socialism.
Liberalism is struggling because of socialism. Not from a lack of socialism.