Introduction Demonstrators in Venezuela protest shortages of basic goods. (credit: “Caracas Shortage Protest 23 January 2015” by Carlos Díaz/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) In 2021, Venezuela was a country in crisis. According to Human Rights Watch , millions of Venezuelans lacked adequate nutrition. The absence of accessible health care and safe drinking water contributed to the spread of COVID-19 . The UN Human Rights Council cited Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro ’s administration for crimes against humanity, including extrajudicial executions, police brutality, and torture. The crisis led an estimated 5.5 million Venezuelans—more than 15 percent of Venezuela’s total population—to flee the country. “Venezuela,” in World Report 2021: Events of 2020 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2021), https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/venezuela; “Venezuela,” in World Report 2022: Events of 2021 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2022), https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/venezuela. Venezuela’s troubles stem from decades of efforts to make the most of the country’s economy. These efforts have been couched in differing political ideologies —that is, consciously held ideas about both how political life is structured and how it should be structured. Venezuela is rich in oil reserves. In 1913, the Venezuelan government contracted with the Royal Dutch Shell Group to extract those reserves. By the 1950s, Venezuela was a leading oil exporter, and its gross national income —the total value of the goods and services in its economy—was the highest in Latin America. Callum Brodie, “Venezuela Was Once South America’s Richest Country. Here’s What Went Wrong,” World Economic Forum, August 7, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/08/venezuela-economic-woes-2017-explained/. However, the distribution of wealth left a sizable percentage of Venezuelans in abject poverty. In 1998, Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela on a platform rooted in socialist ideology, which he promised would improve the condition of the lower classes. Chávez placed the oil industry under the control of the state and embarked on a program of significant wealth redistribution. Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, has kept these policies in place. While the policies substantially improved the living conditions of the poorest Venezuelans, Victor Bulmer-Thomas, “Analysis: How Hugo Chavez Changed Venezuela,” BBC News, March 6, 2013, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-15240081. and poverty rates declined in the early 2000s, “Percentage of households in poverty and extreme poverty in Venezuela from 2002 to 2020,” Statista, 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235189/household-poverty-rate-venezuela/. from 2007 to 2017 the gross national product of Venezuela declined sharply, and the inflation rate spiked. “Venezuela: Gross domestic product (GDP) in current prices from 1984 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars), ” Statista, 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/370937/gross-domestic-product-gdp-in-venezuela/. Since 2019, unemployment rates have increased considerably. “Venezuela: Unemployment rate from 1999 to 2020,” Statista, 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/370935/unemployment-rate-in-venezuela/. In addition, Chávez and Maduro have been accused of suppressing political opposition and manipulating the political process to ensure their continued rule. Defenders of the Maduro regime argue that sanctions imposed by nations hostile to Venezuela’s socialist ideology have been the major driver of economic decline and that human rights abuses have been exaggerated. Opponents of the regime, both inside and outside Venezuela, allege that the problems—both economic and political—result from socialist ideology itself. Will opponents of the socialist regime emerge triumphant? If so, will the political ideologies of liberalism and neoliberalism espoused in opposition to Chávez and Maduro eventually prevail? The future of Venezuela remains uncertain. So far, the 21st century has been marked by increasing tensions among rival political ideologies around the world. Will the conservative populist ideology in contemporary Brazil continue to eclipse the center-left ideology that has marked so much of Latin American politics in the past few decades? Karen Silva-Torres, Carolina Rozo-Higuera, and Daniel S. Leon, eds., Social and Political Transitions during the Left Turn in Latin America (New York: Routledge, 2022). On the other side of the globe, will the government of Afghanistan, which in the summer of 2021 fell once again into the hands of the Taliban , survive as a governing regime based on religious extremism ? In many parts of the world, ideological flux defines political life, with contests between and among socialism, liberalism and neoliberalism, the center left, conservative populism, religious extremism, and a range of other ideological visions. The political ideologies at the center of current conflicts have evolved throughout history. This chapter begins with a brief review of some of the core thinkers and central concepts in Western political thought that developed from the classical period of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE to the present.

Social Sciences


The Classical Origins of Western Political Ideologies Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Discuss the key political concepts developed by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Identify common themes in the ideas of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Illustrate how the ideas of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle contribute to contemporary political thought. How should people organize their lives together in society? What rules should direct individual and collective behavior? This chapter begins in Athens, a city often seen as the apex of the Western classical world. Socrates and Plato In the fifth century BCE, Athenian philosopher Socrates maintained that people should seek the answers to the most fundamental of life’s questions through reason, accepting as true only ideas that have withstood criticism and can be stated clearly and precisely. Socrates’s legacy is preserved mostly through the writings of one of his pupils, Plato (428–348 BCE). In The Republic , Plato develops a detailed, reasoned argument that political power should be vested in individuals of exceptional skill who possess knowledge about the true nature of the world and a genuine love of wisdom. Plato believed that philosophers best fit this bill and should hold unrestricted political power. Such rulers would be free from temptations to corruption and would understand what is best for the communities over which they rule. Such a government, Plato argued, would secure true justice. Plato argued for wise and benevolent rulers who would be guided by reason. (credit: “Plato. Line Engraving by L. Vorsterman after Sir P. P. Rubens,” Wellcome Collection, Public Domain) Aristotle Plato’s student Aristotle (384–322 BCE) agreed that either rule by a supremely wise and virtuous ruler who attends to the good of the community, which he called a monarchy , or rule by a group of such virtuous rulers, which he called an aristocracy , would be the ideal political condition. However, both Aristotle and Plato worried that a system in which rule was given to one man might turn into a tyranny , with one person ruling only for their own good. Similarly, if rule was vested in a small group, that group may become an oligarchy , defined as rule by a few in service of their own advantage. Given these possibilities, Aristotle asked if political rule could safely be lodged in the majority of citizens in the form of a democracy . Aristotle suspected that this, again, might result in a form of rule that would neglect the good of the whole in favor of the interests of the majority. Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle , trans. Peter L. Phillips Simpson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), bks. 3–4. Even today, monarchs and authoritarian rulers often justify their rule based on skepticism about the ability of the majority to pursue the interests of the whole of society. Aristotle believed that the best hope that a majority of citizens could hold political power and rule with the goal of securing the public good would be if the majority of citizens were what is now called the middle class . Ideally, for Aristotle, political offices would reflect the wealth disparities that exist, with both those with more wealth and those with less becoming political leaders, Curtis Johnson, “Aristotle’s Polity: Mixed or Middle Constitution?,” History of Political Thought 9, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 189–204, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44797104. and the society would have great respect for the rule of law . Richard Kraut, Aristotle: Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 400. He called such a form of government a Politeia . In a Politeia , the government would serve the public good, and society would be able to move toward fulfilling the true human potential of its citizens. Aristotle argued that this would be so because only by exercising the distinctly human capacity for rational debate, discussion, and judgment on matters that involve the good of a community can people take advantage of the full human potential. Because political participation can involve these kinds of activities, to reach one’s full potential as a human, one must participate in the exercise of political power that is structured around debate and deliberation concerning the common good of society. Kraut, Aristotle , 240–276. Inspired by Aristotle, contemporary thinkers such as Stanford University professor James Fishkin have argued that by expanding the number of citizens engaged in political debate and decisions, a society can both assemble perspectives in a way that advances the public good and enable citizens to realize their full potential. Modern technology, Fishkin argues, makes this possible to achieve on a large scale. James S. Fishkin, Democracy When the People Are Thinking: Revitalizing Our Politics through Public Deliberation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). …Rules on Behalf of… Self All Individual Tyranny Monarchy Few Oligarchy Aristocracy Majority Democracy Politeia A Summary of Aristotle’s Categories of Political Regimes Other contemporary thinkers agree with Aristotle’s assessment that income inequalities that divide the populace into groups at both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum serve to undermine the common good. Traces of Aristotle’s thought appear in frequent political messaging, in the United States and elsewhere, that the middle class is the backbone of the nation and deserves government support and protection. In 2015, a Pew Research Center report found that middle-income families and individuals now constitute a minority of the total US population—something that many see as a cause of concern. See Tami Luhby, “Middle Class No Longer Dominates in the US,” CNN Business, December 9, 2015, https://money.cnn.com/2015/12/09/news/economy/middle-class/index.html. Aristotle held that a properly governed regime must encourage its citizens to cultivate certain virtues, such as wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. In order to achieve these virtues, individuals need the government, Aristotle maintained, because government has the authority to regulate family life, school, media, the arts, and the prevailing behaviors in the broader culture. Inspired in part by Aristotle, a number of contemporary educational reform advocates have argued for a heightened role for character education in public schools to instill what they consider to be the appropriate virtues. Educational theorist Kristján Kristjánsson points out that a sizable amount of advocacy for educational reform is “anchored firmly in Aristotelian assumptions” and represents, in fact, an “Aristotle-fuelled trend” in educational policy. Kristján Kristjánsson, Aristotle, Emotions, and Education (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 2, 3. Ancient Greek political ideologies emphasized the importance of consolidating political power in the hands of a virtuous ruler or group of rulers while also looking to design second-best models of government, usually involving a mixed system of government. political ideologies consciously held ideas about both how political life is structured and how it should be structured

Social Sciences


The Laws of Nature and the Social Contract Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Explain the central political concepts developed by Hobbes, Locke, Smith, and Rousseau. Identify common themes in the ideas of Hobbes, Locke, Smith, and Rousseau. Illustrate the ways in which the ideas of Hobbes, Locke, Smith, and Rousseau have contributed to the development of political thought. Early Christian thinkers conceived of government as a tool for advancing and securing the Christian faith. Ultimately, many Christians concluded that the structure and function of government should be based primarily not on what human reason suggests but rather on the Bible. One early Christian thinker, Tertullian (155–220 CE), argued that the revelations of God should supersede human insights and should serve as the true foundation of political order. Human reason, according to Tertullian, must always be secondary to the Christian approach to life disclosed in scripture. In general, Tertullian’s ideas would cast a large shadow over Western political thought until the early 17th century, when thinkers such as English philosopher Thomas Hobbes once again championed greater reliance on human reason. Thomas Hobbes Most of the systems that emerged across Europe after the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire in the fifth century CE were monarchies that promoted and defended Christianity to justify their rule. In the mid-1600s, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) argued that political systems should be judged based not on their adherence to and glorification of a particular religion but only on their role in securing social peace. Hobbes argued that humans can advance what he called laws of nature , or rules based on human reason that, if all people followed them, would achieve peace and safety. However, some overarching earthly authority is needed to enforce these laws. In the absence of any political authority—what Hobbes called the state of nature —following the laws of nature would make a person vulnerable to attacks from those who did not follow them. Therefore, it would be to each individual’s advantage to authorize what Hobbes called a Leviathan —an enormously powerful governmental entity—to impose on all people a symmetrical fear of punishment if they break the laws of nature. Based on this thought experiment, Hobbes argued that individuals should embrace a social contract , agreeing among themselves to give their loyalty to a political ruler who could uphold the laws of nature with unrestricted power. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil , introd. Herbert W. Schneider (Indianapolis: Library of the Liberal Arts, 1977), pt. 1, bks. 13–16. John Locke English philosopher and physician John Locke (1632–1704) seized on Hobbes’s concepts of the state of nature and a social contract among people, but his conception of natural laws was very different. Locke saw natural laws as a set of moral rules, discoverable by reason and based ultimately on the rationally provable existence of God, that are equally applicable to all. Unlike Hobbes, Locke saw the natural laws, and related natural rights , as placing obligations on everyone, whether or not a government imposes uniform penalties for breaking them. The natural law establishes natural rights and associated duties to others and to oneself. For Locke, one has, for example, a natural right to life, and as a result, all others have a natural duty to respect this natural right. Individuals have a duty to themselves not to commit suicide or let their own natural talents go to waste. Each individual has a duty to respect the natural rights of all other humans. John Locke, Natural Rights Enlightenment thinker John Locke profoundly influenced early American government. Locke used the thought experiment of the state of nature At certain points in his famous Second Treatise of Government , Locke seems to imply that states of nature have arisen in human history. John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government , ch. 4, in Two Treatises of Government , ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), bk. 2. to determine what individuals who are rational but not subject to government would do. He imagined that in the state of nature each person would have the right to punish those who violated anyone’s natural rights. Locke argued that individuals in the state of nature would be entitled to own land only if they mixed it with what they inherently owned—their bodies and their bodies’ labor. However, individuals could acquire land only if doing so did not harm the ability of those who did not own land to live and prosper. Locke, Second Treatise , ch. 5. Locke believed that in the state of nature a society would emerge in which some owned more land than others without harming them. He argued that individuals would only put the work into owning large amounts of land if they thought they could use that land to derive a profit by developing it to produce things that others value. So, for Locke, the result of unequal land ownership would be a society in which a great number of the things people want are produced. In the state of nature, individuals would eventually agree to create money as a means of exchange. Owners could then contract individuals to work their land in return for wages paid in money and focus even more on producing items on which people would be willing to spend their wages. Even if landowners acquired all previously unowned land, a commercial society would emerge based on the free exchange of goods and services. The net result, Locke argued, would be a high standard of living for all, one much higher than in the early stages of the state of nature. On this basis, Locke maintained that no one would be harmed by the emergence of an economic system based on private property, even if it resulted in substantial inequality. While Locke believed that if individuals in the state of nature focused on the natural law and on the benefits of private property there would be peace and prosperity, he argued that it is rational to predict that tensions would likely emerge. Some would become jealous of those with more wealth, and the ability of each person to punish violations of the natural law would eventually lead to chaos. Therefore, rational individuals in a state of nature would agree among themselves to enter into a social contract that would preserve the rights to private property and personal freedom while transferring the power to enforce natural rights to a government whose sole purpose would be to uphold those natural rights. See Gopal Sreenivasan, The Limits of Lockean Rights in Property (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). In the state of nature, individuals would have the flexibility to determine the exact form the government should take to execute these tasks. One way to limit the possibility that the government might abuse the people’s natural rights would be through some limited degree of landowner representation in government. This would be a safeguard against abusive property taxation—a forerunner of the principle, popularized in the American colonies, that there should be no taxation without some measure of popular representation. Frank Marini, “John Locke and the Revision of Classical Democratic Theory,” The Western Political Quarterly 22, no. 1 (1969): 11, https://www.jstor.org/stable/446143. Though residents of Washington, DC, must abide by all federal laws, they have no dedicated, voting representatives in Congress. In a small act of protest, Washington, DC, license plates read “Taxation without Representation.” (credit: “Taxation without Representation” by Owen Byrne/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Locke contended that if the government the people created in the state of nature violated their natural rights and the natural law, the right of revolution would entitle the people to use force to punish that government and depose its rulers. Based on his thought experiment, Locke maintained that the people should demand that existing governments protect rights, protect private property and the right to sell labor for wages, be subject to the people’s right of revolution, and fulfill their duties while minimizing the risks of violating the people’s natural rights. Applying Locke’s Ideas to Global Trade Locke’s writings exerted a profound influence on the emergence of the Enlightenment (1690s–1790s), a period in Western history that emphasized the ordering of social, political, and religious life solely on the basis of reason. Before the 18th century, most political regimes enacted protectionist or mercantilist policies—that is, policies that discriminated against other countries’ imports and subsidized exports. In The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith (1723–1790) applies to international trade Locke ’s principle that the free exchange of goods and services leads to prosperity for all. Smith argues that countries should lower their tariffs on imports, reduce subsidies for exports, and allow a free market to emerge among all nations. This, he argues, enables nations to specialize in those exports for which they have a comparative advantage , or a competitive edge over other countries in producing and selling particular goods, while affording their citizens lower prices on imports from countries that have a comparative advantage in other areas of production. As counterintuitive as that struck many at the time, reason, Smith maintains, shows that the wealth of a nation grows in proportion to its freedom of trade. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Prolific philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau adopted Locke’s state of nature, less as a thought experiment and more as an actual anthropological account of human history. Rousseau argued that “man was/is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract: With Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy , ed. Roger D. Masters, trans. Judith R. Masters (London: Bedford, 1978), 46. All humans have a natural right to be free and a natural compassion toward others. However, humans are enslaved by the desire for wealth and social status, and that has resulted in the creation of oppressive political regimes. Introduction to Rousseau: The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract emerged at a time of changing relationships between the people and their rulers. In The Social Contract , Rousseau argues that in order to liberate themselves, a group must first develop a heightened sense of collective identity as they confront a common challenge. Charismatic leaders must cultivate among the people a common religious sentiment—what Rousseau calls a civil religion —that defines citizens as brothers and sisters and teaches respect for religious differences. This civil religion would deepen the sense of collective identity among the population. With this sense of team-spiritedness in place, the people themselves—and not merely representatives—should assemble together to determine the laws that should govern them. To guard against corruption, laws can be passed only if they apply to all, without exemptions for any particular person or group, Melissa Schwartzberg, “Voting the General Will: Rousseau on Decision Rules,” Political Theory 36. no. 3 (2008): 403–423, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20452639. and the process of lawmaking must not involve political factions or fancy rhetoric. The people should reassemble periodically to reevaluate their laws to ensure that they serve the people under new circumstances. Rousseau argues that the laws such an assembly would pass would secure the general will —that is, the true good of each and every person in society. These laws would reduce income inequality and institute a system of civic education that would reinforce the civic religion and seek to cultivate civic virtue, a firmly rooted disposition to hold the good of the political community above narrow self-interest. Rousseau’s ideas have been extremely influential. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1846) asserted that the people of the United States should meet for periodic constitutional conventions, at which time the whole constitutional system should be judged anew. More recently, political leader and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has argued that the ability to amend the Constitution places a deep trust in ordinary people to revise all the laws as they see fit, as it is a long-established principle that there is no such thing as an unconstitutional constitutional amendment. In principle, anything is fair game for the amending process. Pete Buttigieg, Trust: America’s Best Chance (New York: Liveright, 2020). One can also see echoes of Rousseau in the public nature of political life. In legal cases, for example, juries must announce their verdict publicly, before the community. Concerns similar to Rousseau’s over how religious differences within a community might undermine the pursuit of the common good arise in a number of contemporary debates, including debates over public education. In countries such as the United States that have enshrined the separation of church and state, Rousseau’s vision of a civil religion is not possible. What is possible in the United States, however, is for the government to give money to parents that they can use to enroll their children in any private (and often quite expensive) religious school they choose, a program that several states have adopted in the form of educational vouchers. Opponents of vouchers argue that public funds must be neutral with respect to any religious teachings and that the state should not subsidize access to religious education. Some voucher opponents assert that vouchers only foment a destabilizing degree of religious tension among the citizenry—a fear at the heart of Rousseau’s advocacy of a civil religion. Eamonn Callan, Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Derek W. Black, “Supreme Court School Voucher Ruling Threatens American Unity and Public Education,” USA Today , July 3, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/07/03/public-education-voucher-danger-supreme-court-decision-column/5359990002/. Opponents of school vouchers raise questions about whether public funding for private religious education undermines Rousseau’s ideal of civil religion. (credit: “Saint John Catholic School” by Dan Keck/Flickr, Public Domain) Hobbes and Locke developed the idea of the state of nature, wherein individuals are thought of as interacting in the absence of a ruling government. Hobbes and Locke both argued that governments should be judged according to what individuals in a state of nature would have freely consented for government to be. Hobbes conceived of the state of nature as one in which an unlimited ruler would be needed. In contrast, because Locke saw individuals as possessing inherent natural rights and interacting with others according to a rationally discernible set of moral rules known as the natural law, he argued that individuals in a state of nature would construct a government to enhance the protection of individual rights and the enforcement of that law. For Locke, individual rights included the right to private property and the free exchange of goods and services. Adam Smith applied Locke’s ideas on property rights and free markets to defend global free trade. Rousseau added to the social contract tradition the idea of government based on the general will. civil religion a common religious sentiment, usually promoted by the state, that defines citizens as brothers and sisters and teaches respect for religious differences general will Rousseau’s term for laws that advance the true good of every person in society laws of nature according to Hobbes, rules based on human reason that would allow people to achieve peace and live free from worries in the state of nature mercantilist economic policies that discriminate against other countries’ imports and subsidize exports natural rights according to Locke and other thinkers, rights that individuals have as a consequence of the natural law social contract according to Hobbes, an agreement among the people to give power to an authority that can ensure that everyone follows the laws of nature and can punish those who do not state of nature a term used by thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau to describe what they suppose life would be like if there were no government ruling over the people

Social Sciences


The Development of Varieties of Liberalism Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define classical liberalism. Contrast classical liberalism with the thought of John Stuart Mill. Discuss ways in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal era contributed to liberal political thought. Assess F. A. Hayek’s contributions to liberal ideology. Many of the of the most prominent political ideologies today have their roots in classical liberalism , a set of ideas that emerged in the 18th century. Classical Liberalism Classical liberalism is a system of thought that combines elements of natural rights, limited government, and capitalism . Capitalism is an economic arrangement based on private property and the freedom to invest one’s wealth or talent in pursuit of profit. Classical liberalism endorses capitalism both within a country and in free trade among nations, as long as free trade is conducted within the moral limits of the natural law. Locke would say that classical liberalism endorses liberty , but it does not endorse moral license , or the freedom to act in ways that are destructive of the rights of others, the self, or the foundations of social peace and prosperity. Locke, Second Treatise , ch. 2. Classical liberalism was revolutionary. It inspired the overthrow of King James II of England and influenced the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution (1776–1783). Later, it inspired thinkers to reflect on the forms of government that best prevent governmental abuse of power. Some argued that expanding suffrage, or the right to vote, enhances the people’s ability to ward off such abuse. For this reason, the framers of the US Constitution generally held that all male citizens who owned property should be entitled to vote for representatives. Benjamin Franklin went further, arguing that all adult White male citizens should be allowed to vote, a position the United States would adopt by the 1830s. Michael Waldman, The Fight to Vote (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016). Defenders of expanding the right to vote argued that all citizens of a minimum age (excluding felons) should be entitled to vote because no person will protect an individual’s rights more than the person themselves. Building on these ideas, an argument emerged for prizing the intrinsic value of voting as a reflection of political equality. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005). In 1870, the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution expanded the right to vote to Black Americans, and in 1920, the 19th Amendment afforded the right to women. John Stuart Mill and the Expansion of Personal Liberty In his work The Subjection of Women (1869), English writer John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) argues for the full inclusion of women in the rights that were emerging in societies based on classical liberalism. In 1859, Mill published On Liberty , advancing the argument that modern societies should expand their commitment to the value of individual freedom. In it, Mill argues that because even great leaders supported by a broad social consensus can make terrible mistakes, it is to society’s advantage to encourage open debate and discussion of all views, however unpopular. Liberty, he argues, should be broadened not only in matters of speech and the press but also so that the law does not restrict the freedom of adults—even if individual adults exercise their freedom in ways that cause them personal harm, as long as that exercise does not harm another person. In this degree of commitment to personal liberty, Mill endorses views that classical liberals such as Locke would reject. According to Locke, the purpose of government is to enforce the natural law, and one of the principles of the natural law is the preservation of one’s life and natural talents. For Mill, both legal measures and pro-liberty cultural norms must protect personal liberty, even when the exercise of that liberty presents a risk to the acting individual, as long as it does not harm anyone else. Mill grounds this standard, which he calls the harm principle , on two assumptions: that freedom encourages an experimentation and open dialogue that allows people to reject dangerous ideas, and that the high value of personal liberty demands nothing less. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty , ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb (New York; Penguin, 1988), chs. 2, 4. FDR and the New Deal The Great Depression (1929–1941) had a significant impact on the classical liberal tradition. At the low point of the Great Depression, more than 25 percent of American workers were unemployed, and a massive contraction in economic activity led producers into waves of bankruptcy. Between 1933 and 1939, the federal government of the United States under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) launched the New Deal , a set of substantial economic regulations and social welfare programs designed to protect consumers, expand the economy, improve the condition of workers, and ease the financial strain on retirees. These programs included the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Social Security Board (now the Social Security Administration ). One New Deal program, the Works Progress Administration, employed millions of Americans during the Depression. (credit: “ Work Pays America! Prosperity ” by Vera Block/Federal Art Project/Library of Congress) FDR questioned the classical liberal belief that the expansion of the government should be held in check, instead advocating for confidence in the role of government to stabilize the economy and create safety net programs. Doing so, FDR argued, would ensure the long-term durability of classical liberalism’s commitment to individual rights and freedom from governmental abuse. It would forestall the need for more extensive government control of private property and tighter restrictions on individual liberty—two much graver threats to classical liberalism’s emphasis on individual rights and limited government. See Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Commonwealth Club Address (1932),” in American Political Thought: Readings and Materials , ed. Keith E. Whittington (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 508. F. A. Hayek Several thinkers, including economist F. A. Hayek (1899–1992), were skeptical of the breadth of governmental expansion under the New Deal. Although Hayek accepted the need to expand the role of the state in regulating economic activity, he contended that only a sizable government with substantial and invasive enforcement powers could regulate a large nation’s economy. In The Road to Serfdom , Hayek argues that extensive state planning of the economy empowers the government in a way that limits freedom and could eventually lead to government regulation of the whole of people’s lives. According to Hayek, expanded government creates entrenched bureaucrats who avoid democratic accountability. Once established, he argues, state regulations and large-scale programs are very difficult to roll back, and expanded economic regulations ultimately lead to reduced prosperity for all. The net result, according to Hayek, would be a new form of serfdom—a condition of limited freedom, entrenched hierarchies, and generalized poverty. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents , ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Hayek argued that once substantial regulations became law, the government would likely create a command economy , setting the prices of goods and services. According to Hayek, this would be a further detriment to economic prosperity because such prosperity depends on the efficient and rational allocation of resources by producers and consumers, and this can only happen in a free market , where prices are set by supply and demand with little to no government regulation. The free market communicates to both producers and consumers, via product pricing, the supply of and demand for various products. Prices go up when a demand is not being met, and producers shift production to make the products that consumers demand. Prices go down when a product is overproduced, and production shifts to making other products. To rely on the government to set prices, Hayek maintained, would lead to the overproduction of some goods, the underproduction of others, and a decline in the overall standard of living. Leland B. Yeager, “Mises and Hayek on Calculation and Knowledge,” The Review of Austrian Economics 7, no. 2 (September 1994): 93–109, https://cdn.mises.org/rae7_2_5_2.pdf. Classical liberals defend individual rights, limited government, and free trade. They favor capitalism, an economic system based on the freedom of owners to deploy their assets in whatever way they deem most profitable and the freedom of those without substantial assets to contract to sell their labor for wages. John Stuart Mill argued for enlarging the boundaries of personal freedom to include all endeavors that do not directly harm other individuals. In response to the Great Depression, a number of leaders advocated for including in the liberal tradition a more robust role for governmental regulation of the economy. Writers such as Hayek dissented, arguing for reduced government regulation of the economy and against the idea of a government-planned economy. classical liberalism an ideology emphasizing natural rights, limited government, and capitalism harm principle the idea advanced by John Stuart Mill that laws should not restrict the freedom of adults, even if adults exercise their freedom in ways that cause them personal physical or moral harm, as long as that exercise does not harm another person

Social Sciences


Nationalism, Communism, Fascism, and Authoritarianism Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Analyze nationalism. Discuss the central concepts of Marx’s political thought. Trace the development of Marxism-inspired political ideologies in the West. Assess the varieties of fascism and authoritarianism. Describe the core tenets of contemporary Chinese communism. Nationalists see a national group as endowed with a distinctive culture and set of ties with other members. These ties often stir a nearly spiritual attachment to the national group. This attachment is often based on shared blood, history, and soil. One of the first defenders of nationalism as a political ideology, German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), argued that if each nation looked inward and celebrated its own distinctive contributions, the world could enjoy international peace. Richard White, “Herder: On the Ethics of Nationalism,” Humanitas 18, nos. 1 and 2 (2005): 166–181, https://css.cua.edu/humanitas_journal/herder-on-the-ethics-of-nationalism/. Other defenders of nationalism have seen it as a rallying cry for independence movements that freed non-Western regions from Western control, as in Vietnam and Algeria, both of which fought long wars to end French colonial rule. However, nationalism has also been used to assert that one nation is superior to all others, and this has stimulated social exclusion and war. The Development of Marxism in the West In the 19th century, German writer Karl Marx (1818–1883) and his collaborator Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) condemned nationalism for its power to distract people from the economic struggles within and across nations and from how some individuals economically exploit members of the same “nation.” Marx predicted that a global revolution would upend the whole of modern society and eventually result in communism —a condition of peace, justice, freedom from repressive laws and political supervision, and equality of material resources in a society without economic classes. Inspired in part by Rousseau , Marx held that in such a society, the inherent human potential for living in peaceful solidarity with all and exercising creative freedom would be fully realized. When Marx sought to sketch the nature of communism, he emphasized this creative freedom: “In communist society, where . . . each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise [poetry, art, music, etc.] after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology , vol. 1, pt. 1, in Marx-Engels Collected Works , vol. 5 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm. Unlike Locke , for whom the free market worked to ensure overall prosperity for all, for Marx and Engels, the internal operations of a free-market economy grounded on private property and the free exchange of goods and services made communism inevitable. According to this vision, in a free market society, most people must sell things to secure money to buy the necessities of life. This creates competition among producers, who eventually compete to offer the lowest prices. One way to do this is to invest in labor-saving machinery that lowers the cost per product by lowering the producer’s labor costs. This leads to growing unemployment, and those who retain their jobs are paid lower and lower wages, all to keep product costs low. This results in the general impoverishment of the mass of society. The Masses , published monthly in New York from 1911 to 1917, focused on labor struggles, women’s rights, and other issues that were considered radical at the time. (credit: “The Masses, July 1916” by The Masses Publishing Co./The Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, Public Domain) According to Marx, in an industrialized society, most people become members of the proletariat , or those who sell their labor to a few large companies. A few are among the bourgeoisie , a group of middle-class merchants, accountants, lawyers, and other professionals who sell small consumer products or professional expertise, but their numbers will eventually shrink. Marxist theorists today see this process playing out as mechanized production and the vast use of information technology renders many once relatively high-paying jobs obsolete. As the workers and those struggling to find steady work become increasingly numerous and increasingly miserable, they will inevitably bond over a recognition of their common economic condition—what Marx calls class consciousness —and will come together to demand change. They will seize the privately held technologies and swiftly and violently act to capture government power. This represents what Marxists call the dictatorship of the proletariat , a temporary period when the workers would organize, take control of the state, and engage in the cleanup operations needed to usher in communism. During this period, the proletariat should control all political speech to prevent counterrevolution and work to upend the social relations of production —that is, social norms such as marriage that have been shaped by the capitalist economy. Marx believed that the forces of capitalism were well advanced in Germany, and he anticipated that German workers would realize his vision for a workers’ revolution, which in turn would extend to neighboring countries. Yet this revolution failed to occur. Why? Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) argued that the owners of the means of production weaponize culture against the workers. They manufacture a set of cultural norms through their control of the media, churches, and schools, asserting what Gramsci called hegemony , or domination by means of the prevailing culture. Hegemonic cultural norms define it as unacceptable to be a revolutionary and acceptable for workers to be content with their lot in life, with their small holdings of private property and the freedoms they enjoy in their private lives, and with the conspicuous entertainments on offer (which are full of rags-to-riches stories that distract them from their oppression and encourage them to view the economic status quo as one of economic opportunity). The hegemonic culture also celebrates patriotism, which creates a false sense that owners and workers are on the same team. Perhaps most dangerously for Marxists, the prevailing culture manufactured by the wealthy elite reinforces religious beliefs and practices, which only divert attention from worker oppression and instill passivity in the system of private property by preaching such commandments as “thou shall not steal.” In his Prison Notebooks , Gramsci argues that communism as a political cause “will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.” Quoted in Robert S. Smith, “Cultural Marxism: Imaginary Conspiracy or Revolutionary Reality?,” Themelios 44, no. 3 (December 2019): 444, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/issue/44-3/. By capturing these culture-producing institutions, the wealthy elite can transform culture so that it celebrates ways of thinking and acting that undermine the norms that discourage a communist revolution. The Russian Marxist Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) developed a somewhat different answer to the question of why a revolution had failed to occur in the industrialized nations of Europe. Lenin argued that the workers needed a vanguard, a small set of dedicated and merciless revolutionary activists working on their behalf to seize the state and take control of the economy. Without a vanguard, the capitalist forces that controlled the economy would always be able, as Lenin believed they did in Germany, to forestall the general impoverishment of the masses. A small group of dedicated activists, on the other hand, could seize power by the force of their revolutionary zeal and then act on the workers’ behalf to break the neck of the capitalist state. See Neil Harding, Leninism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996). Inside Gates of Soviet Russia (1914–1919) This newsreel footage shows what life was like for peasants in Soviet Russia under Lenin. Lenin advocated for this position in Russia, which was underdeveloped in terms of industrial machinery. Because the Leninists who seized power in Russia in November 1917 believed that highly productive machinery was necessary to provide such plenty that people would think it natural to share with one another, their key tasks were rapid industrialization, consciousness-raising among the workers, and the suppression of any forces resisting the move toward communism. Lenin still held an international vision and hoped to see parallel revolutions in the industrialized world. After Lenin’s death in 1924, his successor, Joseph Stalin , and later rulers of the Soviet Union took these objectives to greater extremes, demanding rigid conformity with Marxist ideology and conducting a state-mobilized commitment to build Russian industry, no matter the cost in lives or to the natural environment. Stalin advanced the idea that while worker revolutions in states outside the Soviet Union may take a very long time to arise, in the meantime, a society based on shared wealth and collective prosperity could be built in Russia. The Soviet Union could defend itself from the foreign interventions that Lenin had argued would inevitably come from capitalist countries. See Neil Harding, “Leninism and Stalinism,” in Leninism , 243–263. In pursuit of these objectives, the Soviet Union’s government under Stalin effectively became a form of totalitarianism , where the state sought to control the totality of its citizens’ lives as a means to achieve state objectives. 20th-Century Fascists Soviet communism was not the only form of totalitarianism that marked the 20th century. In the early 1920s, fascism , an ideology that combines reverence for the state with nationalism, anti-communism, and skepticism of the parliamentary form of government, first emerged in Italy and Spain. Under a parliamentary form of government, parties are elected to a legislative chamber, and the chamber, by a majority vote, selects members of the executive branch. By the 1900s in Italy, Spain, and other European nations, an array of different parties had emerged and been elected to parliament, making it very hard to form parliamentary majorities and select an executive branch capable of achieving results that would satisfy large sections of the population. In part in response to the challenges of governing under such fragmented parliaments, fascism sought to inspire nationalist loyalty to a single leader who would forcefully get “positive” results. Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995). The Nazism that governed Germany from 1934 to 1945 was a particularly vile expression of fascism. Inspired by the Italian Fascist Benito Mussolini , who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943, Germany’s Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) developed a fascist ideology that sought to consolidate political power in the hands of one ruler. Nazism opposed much in modern life—especially the freedoms that Germans enjoyed under the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), which Hitler found decadent. But in other ways, Nazism was very modern. It embraced industrialization and rejected any lingering privileges of hereditary aristocracy in Germany. It sought to undermine culturally entrenched forms of religion in Germany, going so far as to advance its own modified form of the faith, led by the Nazi-controlled Reich bishop, which it called German Christianity. Richard Steigmann-Gall, Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). A form of totalitarianism, Nazism sought the coordination of the whole of society around Nazi ideology. To these views, Nazism added a horrific form of race-based hatred of Jews and other races, such as Slavs (the native population of eastern Europe). It justified this racism on the basis of what it saw as modern “science.” Nazi racism mitigated its commitment to nationalism and supplemented it with an appeal to all “Aryans,” seeking alliances beyond Germany with other “Aryan” nations. Fueled by extreme hatred, the Nazis carried out the Holocaust , the systematic and partially successful attempt to exterminate all Jews and others they deemed inferior, resulting in the murder of many millions of people in Europe. Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1986). To date, the Holocaust is the worst genocide in human history. Mein Kampf : Hitler’s Nazi Philosophy In his manifesto, Mein Kampf , Adolf Hitler articulated Nazi philosophy, which aimed, under the unquestioned authority of the führer, to exterminate those who did not belong to what Nazis considered to be the master race. Mid-20th-Century Western Authoritarianism Several European countries in the 20th century sought to avoid fascism and communism, yet resisted adopting the liberal tradition. During the 20th century, Portugal came to be governed by the principles of authoritarianism , an ideology that may allow freedoms in nonpolitical life but does not permit any political challenge to the ruler. From 1932 to 1968, the authoritarian prime minister of Portugal, António Salazar , attempted to create a state ruled exclusively by his own party that would permit a substantial (though incomplete) measure of economic and personal freedoms and respect for human rights. Portugal was considered a safe haven from Nazi oppression, and the government undertook efforts to grant false visas and asylum for Jews, especially those from eastern Europe. Portugal tolerated religious dissent, and it had a relatively free and open economy. Gilbert, Holocaust . Defenders justified the principle of authoritarian rule on the basis that the democratic selection of rulers was just too dangerous. Would the people be consumed by the passions aroused by the Nazis as they sought to defeat communism and protect what they called the higher race? Or would they be captivated by the call for equality, spearheaded by the working class, and embrace Soviet-style communism? To avoid either, Portugal instituted an undemocratic authoritarian system governed by a leader who, it was hoped, would rule with moderation and sensitivity to basic rights. Contemporary Authoritarianism: Egypt In recent years, authoritarianism has expanded in parts of the world. In 2011 and 2012, the Arab Spring emerged in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia to remove authoritarian leaders and transform these states into representative democracies. In Egypt, uprisings led to the removal from office of longtime authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak in 2011. In the elections that followed, Mohamed Morsi , a member of an Islamic extremist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood , was elected president. Amid protests following his election, former military general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seized power. Sisi has since consolidated his power to ensure his unopposed rule, having justified this assumption of unchecked power with the same argument advanced by the authoritarian ruler António Salazar: the people cannot be trusted to select appropriate leaders. This judgment is advanced as a serious ideological position in large parts of the world. How the Arab Spring Started and How It Affected the World The Arab Spring started with a single protest in Tunisia in 2011 and spread throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa. Contemporary Chinese Communism Although the Soviet Union, which based its government on ideas inspired by Marx, collapsed in 1991, communism persists as a political ideology. In fact, the most populous country on Earth, the People’s Republic of China, is currently governed by a regime committed to a version of communist ideology. In China, no individual who is not a member of the Chinese Communist Party may hold political office. Under the leadership of Mao Zedong , the Communist Party seized power in 1949. Mao, who served as the premier of China until his death in 1976, developed a distinctive form of Marxist-Leninist ideology that came to be known as Maoism. Maoism held that the Chinese peasantry, and not the industrial workers, could and should be the agents ushering in communism; all that they needed was to be led, shaped, and molded by a sufficiently powerful political party. The peasants, Mao argued, had many of the attributes that Marx believed would lead to a revolution and to the creation of the communist condition. Mao contended that the peasants’ poverty made them miserable, their ignorance made them malleable, and their supposed natural combativeness made them open to embracing change through revolutionary struggle. What the peasants lacked that Marx believed the urban industrial workers had was a team-spiritedness and a shared class consciousness. Hence, for Mao, what the masses needed to mold them into a revolutionary force was a strong revolutionary party (what Lenin called a vanguard) with exclusive political power. Mao viewed urban, intellectual groups with special suspicion, and from 1966 to 1976, he made them targets for persecution in the Cultural Revolution , a movement led mostly by student-run battalions of militant activists known as Red Guards who worked to silence dissent. Because China during Mao’s reign had a population of over 800 million, Mao felt that these measures were the only way to achieve the goals of the Chinese Communist Party. In this Chinese propaganda poster, peasant workers, soldiers, and students all follow Mao and his teachings, as symbolized by the book bearing Mao’s likeness that the worker carries in the foreground. (credit: “Advance Courageously under the Guidance of the Red Flag of Mao Zedong Thought” by Pang Ka/Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Before Mao died in 1976, he declared that China was in the “initial stage of socialism.” His successor, Deng Xiaoping, argued that although great work had been achieved under Mao, the goal of a classless society was still a ways off, and therefore, economic experimentation in alternative ways to achieve the communist goals was justifiable. Deng Xiaoping, “Building Socialism with a Specifically Chinese Character,” The People’s Daily , June 30, 1984. Instead of controlling every aspect of economic production, Deng instituted a policy, still ongoing in China today, that allows private property and free markets in a controlled manner. The policy primarily allows consumer items (always under the strict supervision of the Communist Party) as a way to achieve increased economic productivity. The Chinese government has also introduced limited religious freedoms to enhance individuals’ life satisfaction in order to increase their economic efficiency. After the productive forces of society become sufficient to meet everyone’s needs, Deng promised, communism would emerge. As communism arose, Deng argued, China would shift away from a profit-based economy to one in which creating and distributing products people need, rather than profiteering, would drive economic output. According to Deng, at this final stage, religion would also disappear because the product-based economy would alleviate human misery, eliminating the need for the “opiate” of religion. Finally, the Communist Party’s firm control over the population would come to an end. This is similar to Rousseau ’s suggestion that when people become liberated from the drive for personal profit, they will be freed not only from economic and political repression but also from the way it warped their psychology. For communist states, at least in theory, the ultimate goal is liberation; repression is not an intrinsic value, only the necessary means to the desired end point of genuine human liberty. When the current leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, assumed office in 2012, he reaffirmed China’s adherence to utilizing market freedoms to achieve the final goal of communism. At the same time, he emphasized the importance of maintaining strong party control. To this end, he has increased state regulation of religion, education, and the media. Most religions face increasing persecution under Xi , but because he sees the traditional Chinese belief system of Confucianism , which emphasizes social cooperation, order, and hierarchy, as a complement to Communist Party goals, he has tolerated its reemergence. Primarily, Xi has encouraged the Chinese populace to derive meaning and moral guidance from a firm attachment to Marxist ideals. To deepen support for the Communist Party, the regime has touted the dramatic reduction in poverty that has occurred in China over the last several decades. Salvatore Babones, “The Meaning of Xi Jinping Thought: National Revival and Military Power,” Foreign Affairs , November 2, 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2017-11-02/meaning-xi-jinping-thought. Nationalism, or pride in and celebration of a national identity based on shared blood, history, and soil, usually to the exclusion or detriment of other identities, rose to prominence as a political ideology in the 19th century. Marx and Engels argued that nationalism divided workers who should cooperate across national boundaries to respond to and eventually overthrow capitalism, which they argued was both inherently inhumane and inherently fraught with internal tensions that made it vulnerable to—or even destined for—replacement by the coordinated revolutionary actions of the working class. Gramsci, Lenin, and Stalin took Marxist thought in new directions. In part catalyzed by the growth of communism, new European political movements emerged, seeking to resist communist expansion. Fascism, and especially Nazism, argued for a heightened form of nationalism that could respond to the communist challenge, while at the same time advancing beliefs in Aryan racial superiority tied to a hateful form of exclusivism and anti-Semitism. Both the communism of the Soviet Union and its allies and the fascism of the Nazi regime were expressions of extreme authoritarianism known as totalitarianism. More moderate forms of authoritarianism have sought—and in a number of countries, such as Egypt, still seek—to maintain some degree of individual freedom while consolidating political power in individuals and institutions that are not democratically accountable. China has allowed some limited freedoms of property and religion while maintaining otherwise strict communist ideals. authoritarianism an ideology that may allow freedoms in nonpolitical life but does not permit any political challenge to the ruler class consciousness a recognition of one’s membership in an economic class, which Marx argued can engender a sense of profound camaraderie among the proletariat based on the recognition of common economic conditions communism in Marxism, the eventual condition that will emerge from the fall of capitalism, characterized by peace, justice, freedom from repressive laws and political supervision, and equality of material resources in a society without economic classes dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist thought, a temporary period in which workers would organize, take control of the state, and engage in the cleanup operations needed to usher in communism fascism an ideology that combines reverence for the state with nationalism, anti-communism, and skepticism of the parliamentary form of government hegemony the prevailing cultural norms that serve to reinforce the economic domination of the upper class Maoism the ideology advanced by Mao Zedong that the Chinese peasantry, and not the industrial workers, could and should be the agents ushering in communism and that the peasants need only to be led by a powerful political party nationalism pride in and celebration of a national identity based on shared blood, history, and soil, usually to the exclusion or detriment of other identities Nazism a form of fascism that governed Germany from 1934 to 1945 social relations of production social norms, such as marriage, that have been shaped by the capitalist economy totalitarianism a political system in which the state seeks to control the totality of its citizens’ lives as a means to achieve state objectives

Social Sciences


Contemporary Democratic Liberalism Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define contemporary democratic liberalism. Describe the center left and the center right. Identify key differences between the center left and the center right. In the mid-1970s, Portugal shifted away from authoritarianism when it adopted a constitution that created democratic elections for public officeholders. In a development that has been called the third wave of democratization , a number of other authoritarian regimes in the 1970s, especially Spain, Taiwan, and South Korea, also made this shift. By the early 1990s, the Soviet Union and other communist states of eastern Europe had also fallen. In the 20th century, democratic liberalism , which merges classical liberalism’s endorsement of capitalism and individual rights with a high regard for equal treatment and democratic decision-making through elected representatives, became the predominant form of political thought in the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, and a range of other nations. Democratic liberalism, not to be confused with the Democratic Party, is an ideology and is not limited to one political party. Liberalism: Where Did It Come From and Are Its Days Numbered? A recent wave of populist sentiment has led some to question the future of liberalism. Following skepticism of direct democracy , in which the populace decides political matters by a direct majority vote, democratic liberalism focuses on the election of representatives who act on the people’s behalf. This distance between the people and political decisions reflects the concern that in a direct democracy, the majority may deprive those in the minority of their rights. Democratic liberalism looks to the courts to exercise some measure of counter-majoritarian power, shielding minorities from abuse by numerical majorities. While specific systems vary, most democratic liberal regimes embrace some measure of mixed government, ensuring that the powers of the courts, the legislature, and the executive are not all in the hands of one governmental body. In addition, democratic liberalism advocates for the government to advance some measures to reduce economic inequality, such as providing a social safety net for the unemployed and taxing inheritance. Democratic liberalism has endorsed a robust role for the state in regulating the nation’s economic activity while remaining within a capitalist economic system. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, two main expressions of democratic liberalism emerged in Western countries: the center right and the center left. In part as a result of their shared commitment to principles such as representative democracy, individual rights, and a free-market economy based on capitalism, both the center right and the center left repudiate socialism, communism, and fascism. Democratic Liberalism and the Center Right The center right constitutes the ideological core of what, in a US context, is the contemporary Republican Party. See Noam Gidron and Daniel Ziblatt, “Center-Right Political Parties in Advanced Democracies,” Annual Review of Political Science 22 (2019): 17–35, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-090717-092750. It largely sees itself as providing an updated form of the political thought of classical liberalism. This connection with classical liberalism is evident in center-right parties outside the United States. In Australia, for example, the center-right party is called the Liberal Party. The core of the center right is what is called political fusionism , a combination of moderate economic libertarianism and moderate social conservatism. See Joseph Bottum, “Social Conservatism and the New Fusionism,” in Varieties of Conservatism in America , ed. Peter Berkowitz (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2004), 31–47. Libertarianism is an ideological vision that promotes limiting government to enhance personal freedom. Libertarians are the heirs of John Stuart Mill ’s philosophy as developed in On Liberty . They therefore prize freedom of speech and expression and liberty with respect to personal behavior, including sexual practices, sexual orientations, and drug use. Libertarians endeavor to eliminate or at least scale back government regulation of the economy and policies that redistribute income. Libertarianism also sees the right to travel internationally to sell one’s labor ( economic migration ) as a basic human right. According to the libertarian Future of Freedom Foundation , “open borders is the only libertarian immigration position.” Jacob G. Hornberger, “Open Borders Is the Only Libertarian Immigration Position,” Hornberger’s Blog , The Future of Freedom Foundation, May 19, 2016, https://www.fff.org/2016/05/19/open-borders-libertarian-position-immigration/. However, in addition to the free flow of labor across borders, for most libertarians, the right to move one’s property overseas in search of greater economic gain—as, for example, by closing factories in the United States and reopening them in parts of the world where labor costs are lower, a practice known as offshoring —is also a basic human right. Loyalty to any particular state is relatively unimportant in contemporary libertarianism. For libertarians, this means that corporations have no moral obligation to keep factories open in the United States if production can be done more cheaply overseas. Libertarians support the development of international trade, the reduction of governmental regulations that they see as impeding the free use of private property, and the lowering of taxes to encourage economic growth. They tend to emphasize the need for generous immigration into the country to provide companies with a steady supply of labor and to favor permissive systems of immigration law that allow large numbers of new people to enter countries each year. Migrant workers harvest corn in Gilroy, California, in 2013. (credit: “20130828-OC-RBN-3316,” by US Department of Agriculture/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Unlike what one might call pure libertarians, moderate economic libertarians accept the scope of the role that government has come to play in the contemporary world while still seeking to minimize government’s growth into new areas. They accept, for example, President Lyndon B. Johnson ’s Great Society policies, such as Medicare and Medicaid , while rejecting the expansion of further governmental programs such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, better known as Obamacare . The school of political thought that emphasizes the need for the government to uphold traditional moral standards based on the natural law or on the long-standing traditions of a given area is known as social conservatism . Moderate social conservatives adhere to this general viewpoint, but most do not call for integrating directly religious teachings into the body of civil law. Typically, they prefer to uphold social conservative values on the grounds of natural law or by deference to local norms and customs, which in certain areas include deeply entrenched religious values. See Jeffrey Bell, The Case for Polarized Politics: Why America Needs Social Conservatism (New York: Encounter Books, 2012). Although they value personal freedom, they seek to ensure, in Locke ’s terms, that liberty is not replaced with a license to engage in immoral behavior. A moderate form of social conservatism accepts some expansions of personal autonomy rights, such as the right of same-sex couples to engage in civil unions or even civil marriages, while at the same time seeking to limit the further expansion of government support for nontraditional values. Moderate social conservatives see contemporary schools as doing a relatively poor job of instilling moral virtue in children and seek to improve character education in schools—a claim that goes all the way back to Aristotle. In the United States, moderate social conservatives are often concerned with judicial activism—that is, courts deciding cases using what social conservatives see as a creative reimagining of what the Constitution means. Social conservatives view such activism as beyond the scope of the judges’ constitutional authority. These conservatives often embrace originalism, the view that the Constitution should be interpreted in light of the understanding of its meaning at the time of its adoption. Most moderate social conservatives in the United States argue that the framers affirmed the power of state governments to uphold standards of morality that include prohibitions on various forms of personal liberty (such as pornography production and distribution). Social conservatives therefore see Supreme Court decisions that restrict states from upholding traditional morality—such as the Supreme Court’s decision in Roth v. United States (1957), which effectively legalized pornography on the basis of the First Amendment —as a form of judicial activism that put the courts on the side of immoral behavior. They see these decisions as overturning long-standing laws against pornography and undermining the ability of state governments, through democratic elections, to define the most beneficial moral ecosystem. It is worth noting that adherents of other political ideologies sometimes have similar concerns about the courts deciding cases and overturning established law in ways that contradict those ideologies. Neil Gorsuch Is an Originalist: What’s That? Originalists attempt to interpret the Constitution in alignment with its original meaning. The center right’s fusion of moderate economic libertarianism and moderate social conservatism emerged as the dominant ideology within the Republican Party in the United States in the decades after World War II, and it has largely remained so—at least, until the rise of Donald Trump , which is explored in the discussion of New Right ideology later in this chapter. Democratic Liberalism and the Center Left The ideological core of the contemporary Democratic Party in the United States can be thought of as embodying center-left democratic liberalism. See Paul Starr, “Center-Left Liberalism,” in The Oxford Companion to American Politics , ed. David Coates, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Like the center right, this view traces back to the political thought that emerged with Locke and developed through the 19th and 20th centuries. This lineage can be seen in Canada, for example, where the center-left party is called the Liberal Party. The center left seeks to maximize personal liberty to the extent that doing so is seen as feasible in light of the needs of the broader community. Center-left advocates tend to avoid sweeping efforts to extend personal liberty, such as legalizing hard drugs and prostitution, yet they do tend to seek to move in a direction similar to Mill’s harm principle—that is, moving to generally broaden personal autonomy as long as no other person is harmed. The rights of LGBTQ+ individuals have moved to the forefront of the center left. The center left tends to highlight how the LGBTQ+ community is similar to rather than in tension with traditional morality, as the US Supreme Court did in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) when it required all states to recognize same-sex marriage as a legal institution. Another important point for the center left is the value of a robust judiciary that can update the words in the Constitution to ensure equality (or to meet what it considers other pressing social needs). Supreme Court justice William Brennan (1906–1997) was well known for advocating the view that the Constitution is a “living” document, which requires judges to interpret the constitutional text in a way that renders it capable of resolving issues in light of contemporary understandings of equality. William J. Brennan, “The Great Debate” (speech, Washington, DC, October 12, 1985), The Federalist Society, https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/the-great-debate-justice-william-j-brennan-jr-october-12-1985. The center left, like the center right, endorses an economic system defined by private property and a free-market capitalist society. There is a tendency on the center left to look at capitalism from the perspective of its ability to improve the conditions of the least well-off individuals in society. They see capitalism as creating new industries that allow the economically disadvantaged to secure well-paying jobs and as improving the quality of life for all. However, the center left supports a more robust role for the government in alleviating the difficulties faced by those in the lowest levels of society than is found in the classical liberal tradition and the center right. Because the center left supports the goal of government working to reduce economic inequalities, it emphasizes policies such as government grants that allow low-income individuals to attend college at low or no cost and expanded state services to provide low-income individuals with low- or no-cost medical care. The center left also supports higher taxes on inheritance and capital gains (the increase in the value of investments) and higher personal and corporate tax rates, as long as taxes target the wealthiest in society and tax revenues are used to reduce economic inequality and improve the lives of the less fortunate. The center left does not endorse socialism , seeing the government’s role in addressing poverty and inequality as limited, though important. Nutshell History: Social Safety Net Social safety nets are designed to help people in need. A recent tendency of the center left in the United States has been to argue for greater majority rule in the institutions of the federal government. The United States Constitution created the Electoral College to select the president in order to temper the power of the numerical majority in the operations of the federal government. This process allows a candidate who has not secured the most votes to win a presidential election. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg , in his 2020 work Trust , argues for a constitutional amendment to elect presidents by a majority vote, eliminating the Electoral College. Buttigieg, Trust , 137. Democratic liberalism has been the predominant form of contemporary political ideology in the industrialized nations of North America and Europe and nations such as South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand for the past 60 years. This ideology combines democratically accountable government with government protections of individual rights and the promotion of a capitalist economy. Under this broad umbrella, the center left and center right constitute primary subgroups. democratic liberalism an ideology that merges elements of classical liberalism, especially its endorsement of capitalism and individual rights, with a high regard for equality of treatment and democratic decision-making through elected representatives direct democracy a system in which the populace decides political matters by direct majority vote fusionism a political movement combining moderate economic libertarianism and moderate social conservatism social conservatism a school of political thought that emphasizes the need for the government to uphold traditional moral standards based on the natural law or on the long-standing traditions of a given area

Social Sciences