Liberalism
豆瓣
The Life of an Idea
Edmund Fawcett
简介
Liberalism dominates today’s politics just as it decisively shaped the past two hundred years of American and European history. Yet there is striking disagreement about what liberalism really means and how it arose. In this engrossing history of liberalism—the first in English for many decades—veteran political observer Edmund Fawcett traces the ideals, successes, and failures of this central political tradition through the lives and ideas of a rich cast of European and American thinkers and politicians, from the early nineteenth century to today.
Using a broad idea of liberalism, the book discusses celebrated thinkers from Constant and Mill to Berlin, Hayek, and Rawls, as well as more neglected figures. Its twentieth-century politicians include Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Willy Brandt, but also Hoover, Reagan, and Kohl. The story tracks political liberalism from its beginnings in the 1830s to its long, grudging compromise with democracy, through a golden age after 1945 to the present mood of challenge and doubt.
Focusing on the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, the book traces how the distinct traditions of these countries converged on the practice of liberal democracy. Although liberalism has many currents, Fawcett suggests that they are held together by shared commitments: resistance to power, faith in social progress, respect for people’s chosen enterprises and beliefs, and acceptance that interests and faiths will always conflict.
An enlightening account of a vulnerable but critically important political creed, Liberalism will be a revelation for readers who think they already know—for good or ill—what liberalism is.
contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction It's About More Than Liberty 1
PART ONE The Confidence of Youth (1830-1880) 27
1 Historical Setting in the 1830s: Thrown into a World of Ceaseless Change 28
2 Guiding Thoughts from Founding Thinkers: Conflict, Resistance, Progress, and Respect 34
i. Humboldt and Constant: Releasing People's Capacities and Respecting Their Privacy 34
ii. Guizot: Taming Conflict without Arbitrary Power 44
iii. Tocqueville and Schulze-Delitzsch: The Modern Powers of Mass Democracy and Mass Markets 57
iv. Chadwick and Cobden: Governments and Markets as Engines of Social Progress 65
v. Smiles and Channing: Personal Progress as Self-Reliance or Moral Uplift 74
vi. Spencer: Liberalism Mistaken for Biology 79
vii. J. S. Mill: Holding Liberalism's Ideas Together 85
3 Liberalism in Practice: Four Exemplary Politicians 98
i. Lincoln: The Many Uses of "Liberty" in the Land of Liberty 98
ii. Laboulaye and Richter: Tests for Liberals in Semiliberal Regimes 106
iii. Gladstone: Liberalism's Capaciousness and the Politicsof Balance 112
4 The Nineteenth-Century Legacy: Liberalism without Caricature 117
i. Respect, "the Individual," and the Lessons of Toleration 117
ii. The Achievements That Gave Liberals Confidence 133
PART TWO Liberalism in Maturity and the Struggle with Democracy (1880-1945) 137
5 Historical Setting in the 1880s: The World Liberals Were Making 138
6 The Compromises That Gave Us Liberal Democracy 146
i. Political Democracy: Liberal Resistance to Suffrage Extension 146
ii. Economic Democracy: The "New Liberalism" and Novel Tasks for the State 159
iii. Ethical Democracy: Letting Go Ethically and the Persistence of Intolerance 167
7 The Economic Powers of the Modern State and Modern Market 173
i. Walras, Marshall, and the Business Press: Resisting the State on Behalf of Markets 173
ii. Hobhouse, Naumann, Croly, and Bourgeois: Resisting Markets on Behalf of Society 186
8 Damaged Ideals and Broken Dreams 198
i. Chamberlain and Bassermann: Liberal Imperialism 198
ii. Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson: Liberal Hawks of 1914-1918 214
iii. Alain, Baldwin, and Brandeis: Liberal Dissent and the Warfare State 227
iv. Stresemann: Liberal Democracy in Peril 237
v. Keynes, Fisher, and Hayek (i): Liberal Economists in the Slump 245
vi. Hoover and Roosevelt: Forgotten Liberal and Foremost Liberal 267
9 Thinking about Liberalism in the 1930s-1940s 275
i. Lippmann and Hayek (ii): Liberals as Antitotalitarians 275
ii. Popper: Liberalism as Openness and Experiment 279
PART THREE Second Chance and Success (1945-1989) 285
10 Historical Setting after 1945: Liberal Democracy's New Start 286
11 New Foundations: Rights, a Democratic Rule of Law, and Welfare 290
i. Drafters of the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights: Liberal Democracy Goes Global 290
ii. German Postwar Liberals: The 1949 Basic Law as Liberal Democracy's Exemplary Charter 302
iii. Beveridge: Liberalism and Welfare 312
12 Liberal Thinking after 1945 316
i. Oakeshott and Berlin: Letting Politics Alone and "Negative" Liberty 317
ii. Hayek (iii): Political Antipolitics 327
iii. Orwell, Camus, and Sartre: Liberals in the Cold War 332
iv. Rawls: Justifying Liberalism 338
v. Nozick, Dworkin, and MacIntyre: Responses to Rawls, Rights, and Community 348
13 The Breadth of Liberal Politics in the 1950s-1980s 355
i. Mendès-France, Brandt, and Johnson: Left Liberalism in the 1950s-1960s 355
ii. Buchanan and Friedman: Liberal Economists Against the State 368
iii. Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, and Kohl: Right Liberalism in the 1970s-1980s 378
PART FOUR After 1989 391
Coda Liberal Dreams in the Twenty-First Century 392
Works Consulted 409
Name Index 433
Subject Index 444
