Politics: Liberalism - The State

-He argued the core liberal principle of 'foundational equality' meant individuals required not just formal equality under the law and constitution but also greater social and economic equality.

-Yet this could be provided, only by a significant redistribution of wealth via an enabling state, with extensive public spending and progressive taxation.

-An enlarged state, with higher taxation and significant wealth redistribution, was consistent with liberalism's historic stress upon government by consent, since the series of philosophical conditions he constructed, 'the original position' and 'veil of ignorance', would lead individuals to choose a society where the poorest members fared significantly better than in present society.

-This would be due to human nature being rational and empathetic, and would lead to a 'fairer society', where inequalities were reduced.

-Regarded as providing a valuable bridge between classical liberalism and modern liberalism, his ideas are also known as representing 'transitional liberalism':

-He outlined in his seminal work 'On Liberty' (1859), what became known as the idea of 'negative freedom', in which it argued that freedom mainly involved an absence of restraint.

-This connected to his 'harm principle', the notion that an individual's actions should always be tolerated, by either the state or other individuals, unless it could be demonstrated that such actions would harm others.

-He divided human actions into 'self-regarding' and 'other regarding'.

-'self-regarding' human actions included religious worship or robust expression of personal views. These actions did not impinge on the freedom of others in society and therefore should be tolerated.

-'other regarding' human actions included violent or riotous behaviour, which clearly did 'harm' the freedom of others in society and therefore should not be tolerated by a liberal state.

-His distinction between 'individualism' and 'individuality' would have crucial implications for how he approached the looming issue of democracy. He was particularly concerned that the timeless liberal principle of 'government by consent' would be compromised if the wishes of some individual citizens were overwhelmed by the wishes of most individual citizens.

-In other words, he feared that a democratic state had the potential to create a 'tyranny of the majority'.

-He argued that the state should promote the widest possible degree of choice and opportunity for everyone and was confident this view would be shared by most of those living in a liberal society.

-Taking issue with Mill's concept of 'negative' liberty, he argued that freedom should not be seen merely as the absence of restraint and 'freedom from' oppressive rulers.

-Instead, it should be regarded as something more altruistic - a concept that involved individuals 'enabling' other individuals, thus allowing them the freedom to pursue individual fulfilment.

-According to him, this approach was not to be confused with the state-led collectivism of socialists such as Beatrice Webb, or the aristocratic paternalism of conservatives like Edmund Burke.

-Although neo-liberals, such as Friedrich von Hayek, claimed that his views amounted to socialism, he argued that the state should still prioritise individual liberty and believed individuals should still be encouraged to pursue self-interest.

-He merely maintained that liberty and happiness had a social dimension and that individuals were not oblivious to the happiness of others.

-His views would later provide a philosophical justification for Liberal politicians like David Lloyd George (UK Prime Minister 1916-1922) who wished to expand and enlarge the state's responsibilities.

-He also had a large influence on William Beveridge's 'Social Insurance and Allied Services' report (1942), which proved the bedrock of Britain's post-war 'welfare state'.

-She always disdained violence or illegality as a means of pursuing change, arguing that significant progress was possible via legal equality, brought by the procedures of a liberal state.

-She campaigned for the state to improve the lot of individuals allegedly hindered by ethnicity, sexuality, physicality or (in the case of her campaigns) gender.

-She thus acknowledged the principles of the US Constitution (widely seen as a document inspired by the philosophy of John Locke) and endorsed its capacity to allow continuous improvement to individuals' lives.

-Consequently, she rejected the more radical feminist argument - that the state was 'patriarchal' and forever under the control of the dominant gender - in favour of a theory consistent with liberal constitutionalism.

It is important to note that in pre-Enlightenment regimes, power was largely hereditary and aristocratic, with circumstances of birth trumping individual ability.

-He denied the traditional, medieval principle that the state was part of God's creation.

-He also disputed the idea that the state had been created by a celestial power, involving monarchs who had a 'divine right' to govern.

-For the same reason, he rejected the notion that 'ordinary' people were 'subjects' of the state, with a quasi-religious obligation to obey the monarch's rulings: the 'true' state, he argued, would be one created by mankind to serve mankind's interests and would arise only from the consent of those who would be governed by it.

-However, he did believe in showing tolerance towards religious communities. So, in the wake of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which cemented the Protestant supremacy in England, he was particularly keen that the post-Revolution state should extend tolerance towards Roman Catholics.

-He described natural society as the 'state of nature'.

-The alternative 'state of law' (the modern state), was designed to improve upon an essentially tolerable situation, by resolving disputes between individuals more efficiently than would be the case under the state of nature.

-He thought this as he acknowledged that under the state of nature, there would have been clashes of interests between individuals pursuing their own, egocentric agendas.

-These clashes of interests, without the sort of formal structures only the state could provide, the resolutions of such clashes, especially concerning property, would not be resolved.

-Thus, a mechanism, a state, was required, to arbitrate effectively between the competing claims of rational individuals.

-The 'state of law' would be legitimate only if it respected natural rights and natural laws, thus ensuring that individuals living under formal laws were never consistently worse off than they had been in the state of nature.

-The state's structures must therefore embody the natural rights and natural liberties that preceded it. Similarly, his ideal state would always reflect the principle that its 'citizens' had voluntarily consented to accept the state's rulings in return for the state improving their situation (later became known as 'social contract theory').

-Due to its 'contractual' nature, the state would have to embody the principle of limited government - in other words, limited to always representing the interests of the governed and always requiring the ongoing consent of the governed.

-He maintained, 'government should always be the servant, not master, of the people'.

-Thus, he believed in a 'Night-watchman State' thereby enabling ‘maximum individual liberty’.

-The state's 'limited' character would be confirmed by the dispersal of its powers. The executive and legislative branches of the state, for example, would be separate, while its lawmakers (i.e. parliamentarians) would be separated from its law enforcers (i.e. the judiciary).

-In eighteenth-century England, both society and the state implied that women were not rational, and that they were thus denied individual freedom and formal equality.

-Women, for example, were rarely allowed land ownership or remunerative employment and sacrificed what little individualism they had in order to become wives. Once married, a woman had little legal protection against violence inflicted by her spouse, and no recourse to divorce.

-Furthermore, women could not vote for those who governed them - a blatant violation of 'government by consent'.

-She welcomed both the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789. She stressed her support for republican government and formal equality, involving a constitutional defence of individual rights.

-But such formal equality, she restated, must be accorded to all individuals, and not just to men.

-For that reason, she applauded the French Revolution's emphasis upon 'citizens' and its apparent indifference to gender differences.