Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Search for:. Helena Vieira February 1st, The contradiction of classical liberalism and libertarianism 4 comments 3 shares Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. In particular, we have adopted the modern tools of economic analysis in order to provide rigorous answers to the following questions: Can liberal views of individual autonomy and freedom provide consistent foundations for social choices?
And what are the implications of classical liberal and libertarian approaches for distributive justice and economic policies? Print Friendly. About the author Helena Vieira. Leave a Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Related Posts Economics and Finance. Is a loose monetary policy still appropriate for the Eurozone? November 8th, Economics and Finance. Is it labour or capital owners who bear the burden of corporate taxation? March 27th, Climate change, Covid, and our existential challenge May 27th, Industrial robots boost productivity and growth, but effect on jobs is an open question August 13th, I see him as good-natured and wrong, which is much different than someone like Rush Limbaugh or Trump.
Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism came from different times, and had different catalysts. The former was removing the oppression of theocracies, monarchies, and the very notion of it being permissible for a small group to rule over the masses, while the latter is addressing the overreaches of imperialism, bureaucracy, and progressivism.
The similarity is that both are movements to reduce the influence of powerful, centralized authorities over individuals—which is why both of them have freedom- liber at their center. The issue is that not all centralized authorities are equally good or bad. You cannot state that liberalism stands for freedom and minimal government and then champion central government solutions. Either this is sadly out of date, needs to discuss the changing definitions of liberalism and conservativism, or is just plain ignorant.
Liberalism is now synonymous with big government making all the decisions for the people.. This country was founded by libertarians. It is their values and traditions that conservatives seek to protect, plus traditional social values. The divide between conservatives and libertarians comes from the social issues.
Many conservatives want to protect traditional social values who can be married, no polygamy, no abortion, no recreational drugs, etc , while a libertarian would not want government involved in those issues. The overlap between the two is the desire for limited government for everything else. It is again a fairly vague term with wide variety of views inside.
Some of the words of definitions are very political-viewpoint-specicfic in other words, just because a liberal will tell you he stands for "X", doesn't mean he stands for "X" in reality, at least from the point of view of his political opponent. Same with when an anti-liberal telling you that liberals stand for "Y". For example your Wiki definition mentioned "freedom of the press". That is extra double hard to square with modern American Liberals solidly supporting " Fairness Doctrine " in s.
Or state-supported arts. Or bailouts to floundering liberal newspapers like NYT. Or with strong political support for Hugo Chavez who closes down all opposition press. The one prominent Democrat who was strongly pro-free-trade Bill Clinton was definitely not on the "liberal" wing of DNC.
Oh, and you have a right to property till liberals decide you make "too much money" and not enough of it is taken from you in taxes. Again, with THEM being the only judge of where "too much" is. Having said that, if you want to try for some generalizations, you may say that in USA, liberals are more for bigger government with more powers tax, regulatory, social rules and libertarians are for smaller governments with less powers tax, regulatory, social rules. Also, American liberals don't mind using force and violence in a civilized way to get their ends for example, using police power of the state to enforce their material redistribution problems, or personally intimidating people who donate money to causes they find morally repugnant , while most of modern libertarianism is built on philosophical and ethical foundation of NON-violence.
To address the last item in your question: When you say "focus on equality", again, you run into definition issues. Liberals are focused on equality of outcome , at the cost of equality of opportunity e. Affirmative Action, highly progressive taxation.
Libertarians are committed to equality of opportunity e. Now, if you meant the difference between " classical liberalism " and libertarianism , that one is a lot more nuanced since they are much closer to each other. Short short version is that libertarianism is in some ways derived - or inherits from - classical libertarianism, throwing out the idea of Social Contract and more clearly defines the basis for individual rights and limits on governments. Norman Barry has written a book on the different trends into the contemporary libertarian tradition, fittingly titled "On classical liberalism and libertarianism"; where he differentiates the two on the basis of the consequentialist ie, economic or utilitarian v.
He does, however, concedes that he is using this classification as a short-hand in the absence of a more sophisticated treatment of the dividing line. Here are relevant exerpts, though I recommend reading the whole thing:. It seems to be clear that Libertarianism developed from Classical Liberalism. Its modern form developed in the United States, where it drew on rights theory, free-market economics, the romantic individualist ideas set out in works such as those of Ayn Rand, for instance, and the American tradition of non-interventionism in foreign policy.
The Vietnam War, and resistance to conscription during that time, and the socio-political attitudes arising from the turmoil of the s seem to have resulted in a loose movement that included a variety of different people, conservatives and liberals, who held the common view that people ought to make decisions for themselves and not force their decisions on others.
A division eventually developed between those Libertarians who wanted to get rid of the state or government altogether and those who were uneasy about the state, but thought that it should be severely limited. The former group are called the Anarco-Capitalist Libertarians, while the latter group are called either just Libertarians or, like myself, Moderate Libertarians. There may be, of course, other interpretations of Libertarianism that I don't know about, and they may place another modifier in front of the term "Libertarian.
He also wrote on differences between Classical Liberals and Welfare Liberals , which I discussed in the first half of the answer:. Classical Liberals, like myself, stress such ideas as voluntary association, incentives, and self-interest. We believe that people are bound by their own decisions, agreements, contracts, and so on. Therefore, people may do unpleasant jobs, for instance, because they pay. They may, of course, do things as well for non-financial reasons.
It is important to note that we stress that our way of doing things combines a way to get things done with a high degree of individual freedom. We assume that people recognize the rights of others and some uncontracted obligations toward others, as well. Classical Liberalism can be contrasted with Welfare or Modern Liberalism which has an opposing view and is currently the dominant political philosophy in the United States.
Welfare Liberals think that citizens should have far more welfare guarantees ; indeed, some have suggested that everyone should have a guaranteed income. Welfare Liberals tend to favor paternalistic actions by government to protect people, and they are less worried about the ethics and practicalities of social engineering by government. They give more weight to social obligations, instead of basic rights, and when they talk about rights and obligations, they have in mind the idea that those who are fortunate have an obligation to serve the community as a whole.
So we can say in a general way that one approach, Classical Liberalism, favors incentives, the shaping of the individual through family upbringing, and participation in the ordinary institutions of a commercial society.
The other side, Welfare or Modern Liberals, puts greater weight on socialization to predispose people to specific views and perspectives which favor their agenda. Welfare Liberalism, by the way, does have a real problem with how to get individuals to do things since there is little incentive to do constructive things if you are given what you need by the government rather than having to work for it yourself.
One might note that welfare recipients have little incentive to take really unpleasant jobs. Classical liberalism is libertarianism - if you take the William Gladstone era as a reference.
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