Early Classical liberalism Late 17th Century To Late 19th Century

Question 1

Which era was CL in?

Answer 1

Late 17th Century to late 19th century

Given its timespan of two centuries, classical liberalism (or original liberalism) is itself somewhat ambiguous, and includes a diverse cast of politicians and philosophers. For this reason, it is helpful to divide it into two sections: early classical liberalism and later classical liberalism.

Question 2

Early CL era

Answer 2

Late 17th century to 18th century

Question 3

Early classical liberalism represents the attempt, during the …

Answer 3

late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, to relate the ideology’s core beliefs to the political and economic climate of the time.

Question 4

Four distinctive features at the time:

Answer 4

revolutionary potential
negative liberty
minimal state
laissez-faire capitalism

Question 5

Laissez-faire capitalism

Answer 5

Based on the liberal belief in private property, and the classical liberal belief in ‘negative liberty’, this is an economic system which allows private enterprise and capitalism to operate with little or no interference from the state.

Question 6

Revolutionary potential
Important ‘core’ Lockean principles of liberalism

Answer 6

Locke’s argument for government by consent and the notion that a state should be driven by the representatives (not masters) of the people

Question 7

Revolutionary potential

Locke’s argument for government by consent, and the notion that a state should be driven by the representatives (not masters) of the people, is one of the most important ‘core’ principles of liberalism; it therefore applies

Answer 7

to all strands of liberal thinking

Question 8

Revolutionary potential
Lockean ideas in the 17th and 18th century required what?

Answer 8

in the context of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it needs to be emphasised that such Lockean ideas - now commonplace in western democracies - required vigorous argument and sometimes revolutionary upheaval.

Question 9

Revolutionary potential
Lockean ideas in the 17th and 18th century required what?

Answer 9

in the context of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it needs to be emphasised that such Lockean ideas - now commonplace in western democracies - required vigorous argument and sometimes revolutionary upheaval.

Question 10

Revolutionary potential

In repudiating the twin pillars of the traditional European state (absolute monarchical power and the ‘divine right of kings’), Locke’s philosophy became associated with

Answer 10

England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688, which duly secured constitutional government and the end of concentrated political power

Question 11

Revolutionary potential

Twin pillars of the traditional European state

Answer 11

absolute monarchical power and the ‘divine right of kings’

Question 12

Revolutionary potential
What did Locke’s blueprint for representative government also inspire ?

And what did it reflect?

Answer 12

also inspired both the American revolt against the British crown after 1775 and the subsequent American Constitution of 1787 — both of which reflected his insistence upon natural rights, the separation of powers and the principle of government by consent.

Question 13

Revolutionary potential

the core liberal idea of rationalism -

Answer 13

that humanity’s prime characteristic was a capacity for reason and logic

Question 14

Revolutionary potential
Attitude towards core liberal idea of rationalism

Answer 14

the core liberal idea of rationalism - that humanity’s prime characteristic was a capacity for reason and logic
— was far from firmly accepted in the eighteenth century; neither was the central liberal idea that society should be geared to maximum individual freedom

Question 15

Revolutionary potential
Key female thinker within classical liberalism and what she argued ?

Answer 15

Other key thinkers within classical liberalism, such as Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97), argued that the treatment of women during this period was a general affront to reason and a particular affront to the individual liberty of half the adult population.

Question 16

Revolutionary potential
What did Wollstonecraft duly contest?

Answer 16

Wollstonecraft duly contested that English society in the eighteenth century could only conceive of women as emotional creatures, suited to marriage and motherhood but little else.

Question 17

Revolutionary potential

As Wollstonecraft observed, instead of developing women’s’

Answer 17

individual potential, Hanoverian society contrived to ‘keep women in a state of listless inactivity and stupid acquiescence.

Question 18

Revolutionary potential
Attitudes towards Wollstonecraft’s subsequent argument

Answer 18

Wollstonecraft’s subsequent argument — that individual men and women required a formal education to release their innate powers of reason — would later be seen as indisputably liberal; yet during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such arguments were considered dangerously radical by most in authority.

Question 19

Negative liberty

Answer 19

A key feature of classical
liberalism, this is a notion of freedom that involves individuals being left alone to pursue their destiny.
Any attempt to interfere with individual actions may therefore be judged an infringement of liberty.

Question 20

Negative liberty
Which early classical liberals were conscious that individual liberty was vital to self-determination and self-reliance, as well as being the condition of government by consent?

Answer 20

Early classical liberals, such as :
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Charles-Louis Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Question 21

Negative liberty

Early classical liberals, such as Voltaire (1694-1778) and Charles-Louis Montesquieu (1689-1755), were conscious that

Answer 21

individual liberty — a crucial ‘natural right’ — was vital to self-determination and self-reliance, as well as being the condition of government by consent. In England, early liberal-feminists, like Wollstonecraft, also tried to relate such ideas to the individual liberty of women.

Question 22

Negative liberty
Qs around the Definition of liberty

Answer 22

early classical liberals were also conscious that ‘liberty’ was a somewhat vague term, which needed clarification if individualism were to be protected.

Question 23

Negative liberty

Individuals should therefore assume that they

Answer 23

that they were ‘naturally’ free until something or someone put a brake on their actions. According to this definition, therefore, a man/women could still exercise a high degree of personal freedom: an assumption complementing one of liberalism’s core beliefs that individuals were potentially autonomous, atomistic and self-reliant. For early classical liberals, this definition would have consequences for both the size of the state and the emerging ‘science’ of economics.

Question 24

Minimal state

Answer 24

A feature of classical liberalism, the minimal state was one that reflected the concept of ‘negative liberty’ by minimising state activities
— for example, legislating and taxing as infrequently as possible, while confining its range to areas such as defence and the protection of private property.

Question 25

Minimal state

The notion of negative freedom defined the answer to another key question facing early classical liberals:

Answer 25

just how much governing should the new constitutional states undertake?

Question 26

Minimal state

just how much governing should the new constitutional states undertake?
Given that liberty was now seen as the absence of restraint, the answer became obvious:

Answer 26

governments should not just be limited in terms of how they could act, but also limited in terms of what they would do. In other words, the limited state should co-exist with the minimal state.

Question 27

Minimal state

The case for the minimal state was perhaps best summarised by who ?

Answer 27

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), one of the USA’s Founding Fathers

Question 28

Minimal state

The case for the minimal state was perhaps best summarised by who and what did he note?

Answer 28

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), one of the USA’s Founding Fathers

‘The government that is best is that which governs least… when government grows, our liberty withers!’

Question 29

Minimal state

The notion of a minimal state also served to strengthen classical liberalism’s faith in what?

Answer 29

the dispersal of political power: a state with assorted checks and balances, after all, would be one where bold state action was fraught with difficulty - and therefore infrequent.

Question 30

Laissez-faire capitalism

Negative liberty and a belief in minimal government eventually led classical liberalism into

Answer 30

the realms of economic activity more specifically, it became linked to the issue of how the state should respond to the emergence of capitalism in the eighteenth century.

Question 31

Laissez-faire capitalism
What two things eventually led CL into the realms of economic activity ?

Answer 31

Negative liberty and a belief in minimal government

Question 32

Laissez-faire capitalism

The most famous response to the emergence of capitalism was by who?

Answer 32

That of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776)

Question 33

Laissez-faire capitalism

The most famous response to the emergence of capitalism.

Answer 33

The most famous response, that of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776), , became one of the most important expressions of classical liberalism and, arguably, the original economics textbook.

Question 34

Laissez-faire
What did Adam Smith argue?

Answer 34

Smith duly argued that capitalism, via the ‘invisible hand’ of market forces, had a limitless capacity to enrich society and the individuals within it. The wealth acquired by individuals would accordingly ‘trickle down’ to the rest of the population — just as long as the state took a laissez-faire (let-it-happen approach to the workings of a market economy.

Question 35

Laissez-faire
What did Adam Smith therefore advocate with a laissez-faire system?

Attitudes to these ideas in the the UK?

Answer 35

Smith therefore advocated the end of tariffs and duties, which had ‘protected’ domestic producers, and the spread of ‘free trade’ between nation-states and their commercial classes. In the UK, these ideas were radical in 1776, but became orthodox in the century that followed.