Originally posted by Adam
[email protected] 10, 2007 12:08 am
There are many forms of liberalism.
There are many branches of the liberal ideology.
The one that is happening in the US nowadays is actually more leaning towards socialist ideals than classicl liberal ones. Which is why there are libertarians, though a minority.
It's actually the reverse -- Liberals openly embrace the free-market system, they just want "across the board regulation," such as in the environment, funding for new technologies, and moderate social welfare. They are NOT for wealth distribution. Conservatives are also for the free-enterprise system, with restrictions on "immoral" markets such as drugs and prostitution, a massive military system, harsh (social) crime laws, and corporate welfare (which helps to keep "the system" in place without much disturbance).
The two main characteristics of a state are the army and the police, and since conservatives support a large army and are "tough on crime," they support a bigger government than American liberals, despite their claims to the contrary of being for "small government."
Classical-Liberals did not believe in free-market corporate capitalism -- modern capitalism was before their time -- and many of them condemned the "slave labor," "incorporations" (what are now called corporations), the worker-manager relationship, inequality (i.e. wealth gaps), etc. that have come to be standard in our society.
They certainly had little in common with modern Libertarians who openly embrace capitalism (slavery).
One could say that the classic liberals are the real opponents of communists, as they stand economically on the opposite side.
You seem to have bought the rhetoric hook, line, and sinker. To be a capitalist, you have to meet several conditions, one of them is "property rights," another is "corporate rights," and yet still another is accepting the worker-manager relationship and the inequalities of the market system.
If you deny these, or they are logically refuted, capitalism becomes indefensible.
Here's what "classical-liberals" had to say on their matter:
... man never regards what he possess as so much is own, as what he does; and the labourer who tends a garden is perhaps in a truer sense its owner, than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits... In view of this consideration, it seems as if all peasants and craftsmen might be elevated into artists; that is, men who love their labour for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, ennoble their character, and exalt and refine their pleasures. And so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often serve to degrade it... But, still, freedom is undoubtedly the indispensable condition, without which even the pursuits most congenial to individual human nature, can never succeed in producing such salutary influences. Whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness. --von Humboldt
(Humboldt also said that man should act on his own and that "the more a man acts on his own, the more he develops himself" because "in large associations he is too prone to become merely an instrument." This was well before Marx, who also thought that capitalist exploitation led to the loss of 'individual character' and that the individual "becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Many classical liberals focused on criticisms of capitalist wage labor and worker manager relationships, other focused on issues that had nothing to do with economics.)
The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this imposter; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one.'
-- Rousseau
God gave the world in common to all mankind. Whenever, in any country, the proprietor ceases to be the improver, political economy has nothing to say in defense of landed property. When the "sacredness" of property is talked of, it should be remembered that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree to landed property. --John Locke
All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
--Adam Smith
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
--Adam Smith
The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state ....[As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to] 'remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.'
--Adam Smith
Such regulations [banking regulations] may, no doubt, be considered as in some respect a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as of the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communcation of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed.
--Adam Smith
Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters. --Adam Smith
The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of any body but themselves. --Adam Smith
Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effcts of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.
--Adam Smith
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. --Adam Smith
It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all the wealth of the
world was originally purchased.
--Adam Smith
No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which the greater part
of the member are poor and miserable.--Adam Smith
No longer enslaved or made dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of property; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred by the accident of birth to both the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against which mankind have hitherto struggles, the poor are not wrong in believing.
--John Stuart Mill
In the particular circumstances of a given age or nation, there is scarcely anything really important to the general interest, which it may not be desirable, or even necessary, that the government should take upon itself, not because private individuals cannot effectually perform it, but because they will not. At some times and places, there will be no roads, docks, harbours, canals, works of irrigation, hospitals, schools, colleges, printing-presses, unless the government establishes them; the public being either too poor to command the necessary resources, or too little advanced in intelligence to appreciate the ends, or not sufficiently practised in joint action to be capable of the means. --John Stuart Mill
We were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious" (autobiography) He seems rather collectivist here, so it seems that Mill should be removed from this article. --John Stuart Mill
They sure sound like capitalists don't they?
There's a lot more quotes like that from Jefferson, Paine (who was a radical), et al.
Can you imagine an American democrat saying that we should "crush corporations"? that labor is what determines the value of something?, that government on behalf of the poor is justified? that if you have two business leaders talking to each other it leads to a conspiracy? etc. And, ironically, a lot of that comes from Adam Smith.
they are usually hardcore capitalists, though in social issues oftentimes in a line with true communists.
Which classical liberals were hardcore capitalists? Many of them were outright collectivists even, such as Bentham. I don't know of any that supported a system along capitalist lines.
It is basically a fight of freedom against security, liberals being fully for freedom, communists for security.
What?