Liberalism is an extremely protean ideology, that has evolved to embody many, often contradictory. meanings. The political scientist Michael Freeden , in his 'Liberalism: a very short introduction' (2015) identifies five temporal layers of liberalism, from resistance to arbitrary state power of the era of John Locke, to the belief in the liberating potential of free markets (Adam Smith, John Bright, Richard Cobden), to the emphasis on the protection of individuality against conformist public opinion (John Stuart Mill), to the belief that the state should promote human flourishing through nascent welfare states (L. T. Hobhouse, John Dewey), to the 'value pluralism' of Isaiah Berlin.
Criticisms of liberalism have, depending on the context, often been wildly divergent: in the United States, liberalism, denoting a preference for big government and the permissive society, has become almost a forbidden term ; on the other hand, since the days of Karl Marx, socialists and communists have denounced 'bourgeois liberalism', with its devotion to abstract, legalistic conceptions of rights, for failing to recognise economic inequalities (see the criticisms of Anthony Arblaster, 'The rise and decline of western liberalism' (1985)), and for being apologists for empire and the many crimes and misdemeanours of American foreign policy (see Richard Seymour, 'The liberal defence of murder' (2009)).
Liberalism has been denounced for its moral universalism and insensitivity to cultural particularism, and inclination to prescribe the standards required for a good life ; or, on the other hand, for its moral relativism and disinclination to judge. Liberalism has been denounced for promoting insurgent nationalism in the 19th century, but also for being too internationalist in the 20th (witness the debate over Brexit). The conflation of liberalism with democracy since 1945 has mystified, rather than clarified, the meanings of liberalism ; and the concept of 'neoliberalism', with its dogmatic insistence that a capitalist economy based on the idealised concept of 'free markets' is the only conceivable way of organising human society, has muddied the waters still further.
You will notice that I have not referred to the vicissitudes of the political party in Britain which bears the name 'liberal'. The relationship between political philosophy, political ideology, and the statements of politicians is fraught and complex. If we are to confine our attentions to Britain (those parties bearing the name 'liberal' on the Continent of Europe, Australasia and Latin America tend to the more conservative and free market end of the political spectrum), the rupture in liberalism brought about by the split between Asquith and Lloyd George during the First World War, engendered by the pressures of that conflict, was not just due to incompatible personalities but to different conceptions of the role of the state, Lloyd George being much more willing to embrace an enhanced role for the State than Asquith. Since then, the Liberal Party has often appeared to oscillate between free market and collectivist positions, and has contained factions which lean one way or the other. To its opponents, its indecisiveness might appear to be bad faith, and a desire to present divergent policies to please different sections of the electorate ; but this lack of definition is an inherent part of the ideological history of liberalism.
However, a history of British liberalism would be seriously misleading if it confined itself solely to the history of a political party. After the party had become no more than a marginal political force (or a useful filler of seats in 'national' governments), intellectuals, such as William Beveridge and John Maynard Keynes, whose political allegiance had never been to anything else than the liberal creed, made crucial contributions to the development of British, indeed global, society after 1945. Much of Keynes' life was spent saving capitalism from the terrible consequences of millions of individual decisions, but he never doubted that capitalism was worth saving ; the principle of social insurance, which was Beveridge's concept, was a way of reconciling individual responsibility with collectivism. Their legacy has been taken up by the intellectual work of the left-liberal economist Will Hutton, with his contributions to the concept of 'stakeholder capitalism', and the left-liberal political scientist and historian David Marquand, with his important analyses of the British state and British political traditions.
The free market Right has also laid claim to liberalism's intellectual legacy. The economist and political philosopher Friedrich Hayek famously claimed that he was not a conservative, and that he was saving liberalism from itself, since it had taken a collectivist wrong turn in the late 19th century ; various individuals, who, following Hayek's footsteps laid the intellectual foundations of 'Thatcherism' did not conceal their intellectual inspiration in 19th century liberalism, including Thatcher herself, whose father was a member of the Liberal Party (see, inter alia, W. H. Greenleaf, 'The British political tradition, Vol. 2 ,The ideological heritage' (1983) ; Richard Cockett, 'Thinking the unthinkable: think-tanks and the economic counter-revolution, 1950-1983' (1995), E. H. H. Green, 'Thatcher' (2006) ).
In the next blogpost I will examine how the current Liberal Party can make itself relevant by recovering that valuable, but complex, heritage.