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Political Science Ideologies The contemporary political and social debate, at least from the time of the beginning of the 19 th century, arose out of two most important conceptual models of how society should be organized. They go under the name of liberalism and socialism. It is essential to state at once that they were not contrasting views; the latter (socialism) must be seen as the radicalization and extension to everybody of the premises included in the former (liberalism). Actually, the most vital and reliable socialist thinking, that of Marx and Engels, emerges from the development, to its great consequences, of their liberal ideas. A scholastic work on Marx and Engels' early period bears specifically the title "Marx and Engels from democratic liberalism to communism. " (Auguste Cornu 1957). Individual rights cannot be defended without some form of governmental structures that defend them against both other people and governmental structures themselves.
The liberal political thinker is committed to the idea that one cannot do with the state. Liberalism operates with a vision of human nature that admits that some political structures are needed to prevent humans from mistreating each other. This is not the only role the state can play, but it is a basic one. Liberalism thus must refuse anarchic theories and utopian Marxist theories that advocate an overthrowing or withering away of the state. Liberals instead work with a firm conviction that some political structure is a need in any well-ordered society. The American sociologist C.
Wright Mills highlighted the exacting relationship between socialism and liberalism when he said: "What is most precious in classic liberalism is most cogently and most productively incorporated in classic Marxism. Karl Marx remains the thinker who has articulated most clearly - and most perilously - the basic tenets which liberalism shares. " (Wright Mills 1962) Besides a common theoretical background, both share the same principal goals. Liberalism and socialism are both in favor of: - Internationalism. The elimination of feudal obstacles to the free circulation of people and goods is to be ascribed to liberal thinking and acting.
This approach was taken up by socialism and encapsulated in influential statements such as "The working men have no country" or in vigorous exhortations like "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 1848) in which national or educational oppositions are disposed of as pre-historical remnants. - Pacifism. The development of free exchanges at a global level meant, in the mind of liberal thinkers, that war was almost unworkable given the amplitude of ordinary interests shared by people all over the earth. For the socialists, the idea that workers of different regions would fight each other was merely inconceivable. Already in the middle of the 19 th century it was remarked that "national dissimilarities and antagonisms are daily more and more disappearing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to autonomy of business, to the world-market, to similarity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life resultant thereto. " (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 1848) - Civil Society. The wide-ranging view of liberalism and socialism is based on the dominance of civil society composed of individuals who had liberated or were realizing themselves of the bondage and limitations imposed by political and economic masters belonging to a previous and fast decaying order.
These common conceptions were not all the time matched by common actions because differences also persisted concerning the rhythm of change: slow smooth adjustments vs. quick radical changes; - nature of change: political freedom vs. economic equality; - agents of change: enlightened individuals vs. laboring classes; - ways of change: self-generated order vs. explicitly devised planning.
If these differences, sometimes more obvious than real, had been determined, the appearance and evolution of a universal civil society made of free broad-based individuals and autonomous networked communities might have been a matter of one or two generations. This would have required the free and direct elaboration and realization of a plurality of experiments in the areas of production and distribution and in the organization of social concerns and human communication. In consequence, this is what started taking place in the imaginative and practical phase of liberalism and socialism. The authorization of slums, the setting up of educational centers, the industrial and communitarian enterprises of Robert Owen, were some of the signs, amongst others, of the readiness to create a New Moral World that included in practical endeavors so many liberal and socialist activists. Regrettably this period soon came to an end.
Qualified later on, in a somewhat derogatory manner, as charitable liberalism and utopian socialism, it was to be superseded by new ideas and new actors that recognized themselves to be more logically based and more able to deliver better and wider-ranging results. (Groenhout 2002) After the middle of the nineteenth century, nevertheless, the soul of the liberal movement lost its way. In 1848, Karl Marx published his Communist Manifesto, and the powerful attractions of socialism made liberalism seem a feeble light. From that time progressive, classical liberals retreated into a defensive posture, struggling constantly against the reforms promulgated by utilitarian dreamers. Individual liberty was no longer the focus. The collectivists claimed superior wisdom; life became the pursuit of pleasure in the total.
Aided and abetted by the Hegel-inspired political idealists, these new-fangled intellectuals moved away from the notion of individual realization to that of collective psyche. The ideal of socialism was so winning that it led to main political and institutional changes - even when the knowledge of history showed it to be extremely flawed. What else but the power of the socialist model can explain its long life in Russia or even parts of Western Europe? (Groenhout 2002) So what differences are we truly parsing here? The categorical difference between the soul of classical liberalism and that of socialism is that one idealizes the individual, the other the collective.
The individual is really at the center of the liberal idea: he or she strives to reach goals that are mutually attainable by all participants in society. Specifically because these goals are internal to the awareness of those who make choices and take actions, the outcomes they produce are neither assessable nor significant, as "social" results. Yet most collective numbers that we use are created with the "social" in mind: think of the distribution tables that American tax analysts use to depict the nations tax burden, or the standard unemployment figure that governments issue from time to time. As soon as we lay down a "social" purpose, even as goal, we contradict the opinion of liberalism itself. So far classical liberals succumbed. They themselves have confused the discussion by promoting the claim that the put on a pedestal and extended market order produces a larger "bundle" of valued goods than any socialist alternative.
To fulfill the efficiency norm in so crude a fashion as this, even theoretically, is to lose the whole game. Everyone is guilty of this charge, since we know, of course, that the extended market does really produce the comparatively larger bundle, on any measure. But attention to any aggregative assessment scale conceals the exclusivity of the liberal order in achieving the purpose of individual liberty. Liberalism favour regulation while socialism, in that order, favour growing degrees of individual freedom. The first thing to note is that the term "liberal political thought" can be used to cover an tremendously broad range of philosophers, from Mill to Rousseau, from Wollstonecraft to Hegel.
Speaking about liberalism we cant but mention Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 - 1799) who was an English writer and feminist, and created The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), one of the first prominent feminist documents. She lived in France at the time of the French Revolution and was mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who created Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft took over the liberal model of the rational, self-determining individual from Locke. She did not consider women to be different than men by nature, attributing the practical differences to publicly constructed gender roles. She put strong stress on motive and stated that women are wise beings, and just like men, must be allowed an equal chance to develop their rational and moral abilities. Women must receive the same education as men, in order to expand virtues such as courage, self-control, justice, and strength, the features that men should build up.
If women develop these features, they will be able to turn into better wives and mothers, and this will also let them develop economic autonomy from men. In stating in this way, she takes the liberal idea of the rational and independent man and extends this to women. That is, she adopts the liberal ideas of freedom and individuality and develops them extending to all people. As Locke animadvert upon the divine right of kings, so Wollstonecraft animadverts on the divine right of husbands. Given the general account of social and political justice offered by this strand of liberal theory, are there reasons for feminists to be committed to liberalism? Four reasons come to mind.
The first combines a historically grounded pragmatism with a basic philosophical concern. The notion of individual rights has been a politically powerful tool in the fight against sexual subordination. The history of the struggle against women's oppression has shown that women need to be able to make decisions for and about their lives as individuals. The right to make decisions that determine the course of one's life, in fact, has been a central right in the fight for women's liberation. (Groenhout 2002) Wollstonecraft does not see women as inferior to men in any way, and states that "when women are ruled by reason... they will be able to share in the equality of opportunities in society." Because of this, it is essential for women to develop reason, obtain power of body and mind, see through the language of womanliness, and get educational parity with men...
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