Liberalism

[Justin Schwartz]

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> >>> owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com 06/20/02 11:46PM >>>
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>At the moment this debate about liberalism is being based on the premises 
>of liberalism itself. I hope that some commies on the list will eventually 
>present a critique of liberalism - I don't have time for that right now - 
>but I find it hard to conceive that liberalism can have any meaning outside 
>of capitalism and its particular history. Of course there is an 
>etymological link between words such as 'liberalism' and others such as 
>'liberty', libertarianism, etc., but surely we do not take political terms 
>at such a shallow level of meaning. If it were so, we would all regard 
>'liberal' as meaning something hardly different from 'good', but 
>unfortunately, IMO, it means something much more specific than that. More 
>later, perhaps....
>Tahir

What it means, first of all, is that the state is neutral on the good; it 
favors, as little as possible, no particular set of ideals about what is 
good over another: neither religious nor secular ideals, consumptionsit or 
perfectionalist ideals, etc. In terms of practical realization, this means 
that a liberal state has a government elected by universal suffrage in 
competitive elections, and offers extensive guarantees of civil and 
political liberties under the rule of the law. The RoL is a matter of the 
laws beinf fairly predictable, reasonably equally applied, and determined in 
a tolerably democratic way.

Liberalism so understood is compatible with socialism, understood as 
democratic control over the basic economic decisions of life. It does not 
favor markets or planning. On that issue it is neutral. It is not compatible 
with Marx's communism envisaged as a stateless society without law. But then 
I think that would be a very bad thing.

jks

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