What does it mean to be a Liberal?
Setting the record straight with Judith Shklar
Written by Conner Bryan
The term “liberal,” and consequently the school of thought the term refers to: liberalism, has been used by many to refer to just as many different strains of thought. In the case of the “liberal snowflake,” liberal is used to indicate sensitivity to social identities, passivity as opposed to violence, and uniqueness despite shared relations.
When associated with members of ANTIFA, the militant anti-fascist organization, however, it is used to symbolize the ways in which the left is just as bad, if not worse, than right-wing white supremacist groups at stirring up violence.
Liberalism is the foundation for the deregulatory efforts of Neoliberalism in the 80s, while being responsible for the foundation of the modern welfare state. The liberal and their relation to liberalism more generally has changed over history.
It is less a philosophical tradition of human freedom than it is a politics founded in concrete historical events, trends, and fears. By watching the way in which Liberalism itself has changed over the years, one can better understand what it means for themselves to be a liberal.
This is the agenda of this article: to navigate the different maturations and divergences of different liberalisms in order to make sense of the many different and often contradictory ways people use it today.
To be sure, “liberal” has its pre-political meanings. One can imagine someone sweetening their coffee liberally, with sugar, before jetting off to university in order to gain a degree in the liberal arts. These examples showcase the use of liberal denoting what is both generous and general. Surely this facet of generosity is not lost on liberalism, even its political context?
It was not until the late 18th century that the term “liberal” was being used as an adjective modifying anything political, like policies, values, and principles. Daniel Klein of The Atlantic cites the most profound and innovative usage of “liberal” in the works of Scotsman William Robertson, who, rather admiringly, spoke of merchant guilds and “the spirit and zeal with which they contended for those liberties and rights,” referring to an attention toward commercial activity that “could not fail of diffusing over Europe new and more liberal ideas concerning justice and order.”
Classical Liberalism is the view that property and freedom are inherently intertwined.
Robertson is no lay scotsman, and he should not be read as just anyone with a pen. Together with his friend and fellow Scot: Adam Smith, who produced the Wealth of Nations, which advocated for a “liberal system of free exportation and free importation,” they became the political pamphleteers of what is now referred to as Classical Liberalism.
Classical Liberalism is the view that property and freedom are inherently intertwined. You cannot have one without the other. What is more, private property is the embodiment of freedom, hence, classical liberals are updated in today’s parlance as “libertarians.” Unless people are granted the liberty to engage in contracts, raise capital, and acquire ownership on their own accord, they never truly can be free. There is little need for the government as it is seen as an obstacle to freedom.
Classical liberalism (read: libertarianism) came about at an interesting time in history: after the collapse of the feudal system and just at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It responded to despotism with polar opposition by invoking benign characteristics of commercial activity, especially when considering the merchants involved.
With the rise of the commonwealth came newfound theories to organize society, and classical liberalism came in with an answer that favored the efforts of commercial enterprise.
From the proliferation of Smith and Robertsons’ teachings on their strand of liberalism, the political and economic critique of old, hierarchical, and monarchic forms of organization grew into doctrines of their own. Not only did libertarianism get its spotlight, but with the Enlightenment, liberal schools of thought popped up all over Europe in the form of “religious liberalism” and “conservative liberalism” and more.
“Liberalism” began to stand in for views that emphasized rationality and liberty. With religious liberalism this meant tolerating differences in religious beliefs while focusing instead on the rationale behind one’s group’s religion.
The conservative strand similarly celebrates relaxing market regulations and promoting liberty, but denies social and ethical progressivism by citing the works of “pre-modern” academics like Edmund Burke, often portrayed as the father of Conservatism himself. This strand values the inherent wisdom of the status quo over anything else.
In her book Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory, Nancy Hirschmann declares John Locke as the “Father of Liberalism,” as we now know it. Using the backdrop of classical liberalisms’ relation to property and freedom viz. economic production, Hirschmann notes how Locke, through negotiating the tensions between “external” and “internal” sources of control, applies the argument to individual action. The external is to the economic structures of political life what the internal is to the governing principles of human agency.
For Locke, humans are endowed with reason by God in order to discover their own freedom. A system of economic free trade à la Smith, becomes the unencumbered agency of the individual. To ground this notion of the individual in a political doctrine, Locke provides everyone with “natural liberties.”
The government is supposed to protect these liberties at all cost. These protections characterize the only points of intervention on the governments behalf. Otherwise known as the “Nightwatchmen State,” i.e., a government tasked with nothing else but keeping guard against any unwanted trespassers.
The important Lockean move, providing him the patriarchal crown to liberalism, was this dissemination between the “external” and “internal,” which for the sake of updating terminology, may simply be considered the difference between “public” and “private” life.
Private life is skeptical of public administrators’ control, coercion, and at worst, oppression. It is important to remember the originality of this dissemination. Before, all life was dedicated to the crown, forcing every one to live as a public servant.
Life before liberalism was by and large life decided for you when you were born into select classes of society. Life since Liberalism allowed individuals to decide for themselves.
From here we may finally take from the political and philosophical underpinnings of classical liberal thought, a generally applicable characterization of liberalism writ large.
Judith Shklar calls this the “Liberalism of Fear.” Human beings have inherited a history wrought with abuses of power by the hands of what Locke assumes were natural protectors. The government is responsible for some of the worst atrocities in history and remains for many, their place of refuge. Fear of cruelty is a conditioned response to the perceived overreach of bureaucratic red tape, extractive taxes, and most importantly, maintaining the divisions between social powers rather than promoting mobility between them.
That these cruelties exist serve as the basic assumption and founding guideline to a political doctrine of liberalism. “What liberalism requires,” Shklar declares, “is the possibility of making the evil of cruelty and fear the basic norm of its political practices and prescriptions.”
In contrast to l’académie du libéralisme of Locke and Smith, the Liberalism of Fear makes no assumption regarding the fundamental properties of human nature, nor does it take any stake in the ideal to which human beings ought to strive. It denies the conformity of purpose or tradition and opts in to a program tolerating the plurality of many peoples’ different purposes.
“The probability of widely divergent selves is obviously one of the basic assumptions of any liberal doctrine,” Shklar writes, implying that “we must assume that some people will be encumbered with group traditions that they cherish, while some may only want to escape from their social origins and ascriptive bonds.”
Fear premised by cruelty is built into la raison d’être of American politics
By valuing both tradition and mobility, liberalism stands in opposition to Conservatism, which prioritizes “group tradition” over and above all else.
The US serves as a staple example for how a liberal founding doctrine navigates these trade offs between tradition and social mobility, and we can use the framework of cruelty in order to critique its evolution to present day.
The opening lines to the Declaration of Independence is bolstered with liberal scaffolding in its preference toward “unalienable rights,” like “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but also in the cautionary rhetoric warning that when “any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.”
Fear premised by cruelty is built into la raison d’être of American politics. But it has also grown in more nuanced ways since the days of our founding fathers.
Today there is no longer an assembly of people gathered together with the objective of creating a State. Thus, it is no longer sufficient to look to the State for occasions of cruelty. Surely, they still exist. The 13th amendment is but one indication of the government becoming destructive of these ends, and different efforts by state legislators to disenfranchise peoples’ ability to live, be free, or pursue happiness showcase the corrosive implications of holding tightly to a tradition predicated upon racism, classism, and sexism.
It is to these efforts that today’s liberal responds. And it is in court that the battle of liberals’ future well-being takes place. “For it is in court,” Shklar writes, “that the citizen meets the might of the State, and it is not an equal contest.”
But since liberals are concerned with the lived conditions of people and not simply the abstract legal recognitions of peoples’ ability, it is also a social matter.
This is how we get to the “liberal snowflake”: a being sensitive to victims of abuse on behalf of the government, cognizant of individuals, movements, and campaigns acting in support of oppressive regimes. The Womens’ Suffrage movement, the Civil Rights movements, and LGBTQ rights-based movements are all examples of liberals using the power of the State to avert cruelty.
But often times cruelty reaches beyond the legal codifications of written laws and operates in the fine prints of individuals’ behavior. As Barack Obama tweeted, “the most important title is not President, or prime minster, but citizen.” Just being an individual is political.
Being an individual liberal means pointing out abuses of power by other citizens, citing their politics in the footnotes of the worst chapters in American history. Being a liberal politician means carrying out the same mission of an aversion to cruelty by changing the laws themselves. Being a liberal means, even its political context, being generally generous.
