This paper evaluates Mill’s arguments favoring a society with an economy dominated by “a principle of individual property” over alternatives dominated by the common ownership of the conditions of life and wealth. Mill’s strategy for addressing the problem of property consists in conducting a comparison of competing systems of ownership (capitalism, socialism or communism) on the criterion of which best distributes wealth to the individual. Mill applies this criterion in the evaluation of these systems in light of three considerations: (...) (1) their feasibility in a highly developed society, (2) their efficiency and likelihood of continuing improvement in comparison to competing systems, and (3) their consistency with and conduciveness to individual liberty. This paper investigates Mill’s arguments regarding the application of these and related considerations to the arguments of socialist and communist theorists with whose views he was familiar and, in varying degrees, sympathetic. As argued here, the arguments Mill employs are not, on his own terms and especially with respect to liberty, adequate to justify his general contention that given the inadequate moral and intellectual development of citizens, it is better to gamble on a private property economy than a socialist alternative. (shrink)

Socialism has long been thought by many to be the enemy of freedom. Here, I argue that in order to understand the relationship between socialism and freedom, we must have a better idea both of what socialism is and of what it is to have a right to freedom. To start, I argue that the right to freedom is best understood as a right to direct one’s own will in the world consistently with the rights of others (...) to do the same. This Kantian conception of the right to freedom is importantly different from the ubiquitous conception of freedom as negative liberty: with this Kantian conception, one’s right to freedom is limited to directing one’s own will and does not include a right to direct the wills of others. I then argue that socialism, like the right to freedom, is often misunderstood: today, socialists often argue for robustly democratic forms of socialism that are far from the autocratic so-called “socialist” regimes of the last century. With a better understanding of both socialism and the right to freedom, we can see that the right to freedom is indeed compatible with a robustly democratic form of socialism. (shrink)

Most people will need an introduction to the life and thought of Aurel Kolnai. Born into a liberal Jewish family in Hungary he converted to Catholicism in his mid-twenties, studied with Husserl, and fought against Hitler with his pen in the Austrian press and with a mammoth study of National Socialist ideology, The War Against the West, which did much to educate Western opinion. The war was spent in the United States. Between 1945 and 1955 he taught at Laval University (...) in Quebec, alternately suffering from the Canadian winter and from what he took to be a fetishistic attitude toward St. Thomas. From 1955 until his death he taught at Bedford College in England. In England he encountered and assimilated the best of English philosophical thought, both analytic and moral. He particularly was impressed by the “intuitionist school,” which reminded him of phenomenology and the “material values” ethics he had studied on the Continent. (shrink)

If one values freedom, what sort of regime of property should one favor: libertarianism, socialism, or something else again? Debate on this topic has been hampered by a failure to distinguish freedom and liberty, which are both of great value, but can come into conflict. Furthermore there are many similar concepts—distinct from both liberty and freedom, yet each representing something we rightly value—which may also come into conflict with each other and with freedom and liberty. Consequently (...) the question posed above has no easy answer. (shrink)

I. Accompanying the rise of professed socialists to political prominence in the United States and Britain, a growing academic literature, spearheaded by French economist Thomas Piketty’s bestsellin...

Liberal Socialism exposes false ideas of justice behind neo-liberal capitalism and combines Rawls's ideas on justice and Marx's views on capitalism to make a plausible case for the alternative social ideal of liberal socialism. A fixed social structure gives equal weight to all competing claims for rights, liberties, and shares of the burdens and benefits of social cooperation, while allowing a democratic majority vote for liberal socialism.

The paper identifies the rule of law, the carriers of institutional restructuring, and the prevailing informal rules in the community as three critical determinants of the outcome of institutional restructuring in the community. The paper demonstrates that the analysis of the interaction among these three determinants – a claim I call the interaction thesis – explains why the transition from socialism to the market economy in postwar West Germany was a success, why the transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe (...) is still uncertain, and why the use of economic policies based on neoclassical economics have produced the rising strength of pro-socialist parties. The conclusion is that the interaction thesis is a powerful and perhaps necessary method for the analysis of institutional changes and their causes, directions and consequences.Cet article identifie l’état de droit, les supports des réformes institutionnelles, et les règles communautaires informelles qui y sont prévalent comme les trois facteurs explicatifs majeurs du succès ou de l’échec de la réforme institutionnelle dans un pays. Cet article démontre que l’analyse de l’interaction entre ces trois facteurs explicatifs – ce que j’appelle la thèse de l’interaction – explique, en premier lieu, le succès de la transition du socialisme vers l’économie de marché en Allemagne de l’Ouest de l’aprèsguerre, ensuite pourquoi la transition vers le capitalisme en Europe de l’Est demeure incertaine, et, enfin, pourquoi le recours à des politiques économiques fondées sur la science économique néoclassique a revigoré les partis politiques à orientation socialiste. La conclusion est que la thèse de l’interaction est une méthode féconde et peut-être nécessaire pour analyser les changements institutionnels ainsi que leurs causes, leurs directions et leurs conséquences. (shrink)

Socialist republicans advocate public ownership and control of the means of production in order to achieve the republican goal of a society without endemic domination. While civic republicanism is often attacked for its conservatism, the relatively neglected radical history of the tradition shows how a republican form of socialism provides powerful conceptual resources to critique capitalism for leaving workers and citizens dominated. This analysis supports a programme of public ownership and economic democracy intended to reduce domination in the workplace (...) and wider society. I defend this socialist republicanism from both the Marxist objection that it overlooks the impersonal nature of domination under capitalism and the left-liberal objections that property-owning democracy or worker codetermination are sufficient to suppress dominating relationships. The resulting position identifies the need for more ambitious institutional grounds for republican liberty than is often supposed, while offering us a distinctive emancipatory justification for socialism. (shrink)

Those who vote intelligently vote for principles as much as they do for policy. The problem is that bodies of principle tend to be incompatible with each other. In fact, they normally conflict, head-on. Conservatism and socialism are two obvious examples here. My point, therefore, is that, with this type of incompatibility, it is difficult to see how any coalition could be maintained for long without a considerable sacrifice of principle – not to say integrity – by at least (...) one of the parties to it. (shrink)

The thrust of Berger's defense of capitalism and rejection of socialism appears in two 1981 articles in the Harvard Business Review by Podhoretz and Berger. The latter is the basis of chapter 9 in The Capitalist Revolution. Both pieces look like classified advertisements, offering the services of neoconservative intellectuals as the “new defenders of capitalism.” The 1980 election returns, Berger wrote, have shown that “the recent political isolation of business might be at an end, and with its passing American (...) society might come again to understand the value of its capitalist heritage.” Yet, Berger warned, the complete restoration of the legitimacy of the business community “will depend as much on successful competition over ideas as on successful performance in the market.”. (shrink)

I reconstruct the civic republican foundations of Eugene Debs’s socialist critique of capitalism, demonstrating how he uses a neo-roman conception of freedom to condemn waged labour. Debs is also shown to build upon this neo-roman liberty in his socialist republican objections to the plutocratic capture of the law and threats of violence faced by the labour movement. This Debsian socialist republicanism can be seen to rest on an ambitious understanding of the demands of citizen sovereignty and civic solidarity. While (...) Debs shares some of the commitments of earlier American labour republican critics of capitalism, he departs from them in his thoroughgoing commitment to common democratic ownership of productive property. His socialist republicanism remains valuable today for its ability to illuminate features of plutocratic control, judicial autocracy, and the regime of property best suited to suppressing economic domination. I conclude that Debs not only deserves a prominent place in an emerging radical republican canon but presents a distinctive contrast with many of his Marxist contemporaries and offers a compelling challenge to recent liberal, plebeian, and socialist forms of republicanism. (shrink)

First Published in 2004. Confusion reigns in sociological accounts of the curent condition of modernity. The story-lines from the 'end of the subject' to 'a new individualism', from the 'dissolution of society' to the re-emergence of 'civil society', from the 'end of modernity' to an 'other modernoity' to 'neo-modernization'. This book offers a sociology of modernity in terms of a historical account of social transformations over the past two centuries, focusing on Western Europe but also looking at the USA and (...) at Soviet socialism as distinct variants of modernity. A fundamental ambivalence of modernity is captured by the double notion of liberty and discipline in its three major dimensions: the relations between individual liberty and political community, betwen agency and structure, and between locally situated human lives and widely extended social institutions. Two major historical transformations of modernity are distinguished, the first one beginning in the late nineteenth century and leading to a social formation that can be called organized modernity, and the second being the one that dissolves organized modernity. It is this current transformation which revives some key concerns of the 'modern project', ideas of liberty, plurality and individual autonomy. But it imperils others, especially the creation of social identities as ties between human beings that allow meaningful and socially viable development of individual autonomy, and the possibility of politics as communicative interaction and collaborative deliberation about what human beings have in common. (shrink)

Opens up new histories of freedom and republicanism by building on Quentin Skinner's ground-breaking Liberty before Liberalism nearly twenty five years after its initial publication. Leading historians and philosophers reveal the neo-Roman conception of liberty that Skinner unearthed as a normative and historical hermeneutic tool of enormous, ongoing power. The volume thinks with neo-Romanism to offer reinterpretations of individual thinkers, such as Montaigne, Grotius and Locke. It probes the role of neo-Roman liberty within hierarchies and structures beyond (...) that of citizen and state – namely, gender, slavery, and democracy. Finally, it reassesses the relationships between neo-Romanism and other languages in the history of political thought: liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and the human rights tradition. The volume concludes with a major reappraisal by Skinner himself. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines Oscar Wilde’s liberal socialist tract, ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’. It posits three discrete arguments. It argues, firstly, that in ‘The Soul of Man’ Wilde was deeply engaged with the socialist theory of William Morris. It claims that Wilde not only repudiated Morris’s aesthetic philosophy, rejecting Morris’s views about co-operation, usefulness, and tradition, and pouring scorn on the notion of dignity in manual labour, but that Wilde also echoed Morris’s utopian romance, News from Nowhere, (...) in two important respects: namely, in his account of crime and punishment on the one hand, and in his treatment of the notion of human nature on the other. Secondly, this article argues that, in ‘The Soul of Man’, Wilde drew on both Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Stuart Mill. It shows how Wilde plagiarised and repurposed ideas drawn from Emerson’s essay, ‘Self-Reliance’. But, in addition, it demonstrates how Wilde duplicated Mill’s view of democracy, individuality, and progress as set out in On Liberty. Finally, then, this article argues that, in his treatment of thrift, gratitude, discontent, and rebellion, Wilde was strongly influenced by Charles Baudelaire’s dramatisation of ‘true philanthropy’ in the narrative prose poem, ‘Let’s Beat Up The Poor!’. (shrink)

An attempt to answer in some detail the questions and criticism brought up in a colloquium on my book on ‘Socialism’.

Socialists believe that equality, community, and economic democracy can only be achieved by a system of joint ownership in the means of production. These property rights do not, as such, pass judgment as to what rights individuals have to their own person. Libertarians believe that individual liberty and autonomy are only coextensive with a set of stringent rights to the person and its powers. These property rights do not, as such, pass judgment as to what rights individuals have to (...) the external world. Bringing libertarianism and socialism together is therefore, in principle, possible. This paper takes this further step, by sketching a constituiton that reconciles individual autonomy with radical equality of condition. To those libertarians drawn to socialist values (such as the pioneers of nineteenth-century anarchism), the paper offers a reconciliation that is arguably more true to these values than left-libertarianism. To those socialists drawn to libertarian values, it offers an alternative to left-libertarianism that avoids the pitfalls of statism. (shrink)

According to conventional wisdom, the causes of economic inequality under capitalism are different in kind from those operating in a socialist system. In socialist societies today the distribution of wealth and income is determined by political authority, whereas in capitalism it is thought to arise mainly from the choices of individuals freely transferring goods and services in the competitive market. Robert Nozick's account of the workings of a ‘free society’ expresses this view clearly:There is no central distribution, no person or (...) group entitled to control all the resources, jointly deciding how they are to be doled out. What each person gets, he gets from others who give to him in exchange for something, or as a gift. In a free society, diverse persons control different resources, and new holdings arise out of the voluntary exchange and actions of persons … The total result is the product of many individual decisions which the different individuals involved are entitled to make. (shrink)

In keeping with the radical openness of his theory of democracy, Habermas avoided pre-determining the ideal mode of economic organization for his favoured model of deliberative democracy. Instead of attempting a full-blown derivation, in this article, I propose adapting the Rawlsian method of comparing different political–economic regimes as candidate applications of his theory of justice to Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy. Although both theorists are seen as endorsing liberal democratic world views, from the perspective of political economy, the corollary of (...) their conceptions of democracy would arguably veer elsewhere: in Rawls’s case, into the territory of property-owning democracy or democratic socialism, and in Habermas’s, into any political–economic regime which guarantees the real exercise of full political and discursive liberties against the background of legitimate lawmaking. The ultimate aim of this article is to discuss whether a concrete conception of democratic socialism, if any, is compatible with Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Contemporary democratic theorists have tended to assume that democracy is compatible with and even requires a capitalist economic system. Rosa Luxemburg offers a democratic criticism of this view, arguing that the dominating effects of a capitalist economy undermine the ability of liberal democracy to actualise its ideals of freedom and equality. Drawing on Luxemburg’s writings, this article theorises a model of socialist democracy which combines support for public ownership and control of the means of production with a plural multi-party electoral (...) system and a defence of civil liberties. It recovers Luxemburg’s conceptualisation of a socialist democracy as the extension of democratic principles to major social and economic institutions currently governed by nondemocratic authority structures. It defends this version of socialist democracy from the liberal objection that it violates citizens’ property rights and the Marxist objection that it retains the dominating structures of the state and a coercive legal system. (shrink)

It is a commonplace of academic conventional wisdom that Marxian theory is not to be judged by the historical experience of actually existing socialist societies. The reasons given in support of this view are familiar enough, but let us rehearse them. Born in adversity, encircled by hostile powers, burdened with the necessity of defending themselves against foreign enemies and with the massive task of educating backward and reactionary populations, the revolutionary socialist governments of this century were each of them denied (...) any real opportunity to implement Marxian socialism in its authentic form. Nowhere has socialism come to power as Marx expected it would – on the back of the organized proletariat of an advanced capitalist society. For this reason, the historical experience of the past sixty years can have no final authority in the assessment of Marxian theory. The failings of Marxist regimes – their domination by bureaucratic elites, their economic crises, their repression of popular movements and of intellectual freedoms, and their dependency on imports of Western technology and capital – are all to be explained as historical contingencies which in no way threaten the validity of Marx's central conceptions. It is not that Marxian socialism has been tried and found wanting but, rather, that it has never been tried. (shrink)

Hailed as the most influential book ever written in favor of freedom, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty is a contradictory and imprecise work. Mill’s notion of liberty coexists with anti-liberal ideas. He defended the private property of capitalists, but not of landowners. He criticized protectionism, but made an exception for infant industries. He defended competition, but set limits on it. He criticized general public education, but allowed the State to force citizens to study. He defended women and men’s (...) freedom, but not the freedom to choose the number of children they wanted to have, or decide about their education, or bequeath goods to them. He said parting from laissez faire was bad unless it produced some good. This admired friend of liberty could not find the logic in family, marriage, religion, tradition, morality, custom; he saw them only as repressive obstacles to freedom. A book supposedly upholding liberty ignores or disdains natural or pre-legal rights, and directs the bulk of its criticism not against the legal or political power of the State but against the tyranny of public opinion. (shrink)

Summary This article presents a comparative analysis of the concepts of totalitarian democracy and positive liberty in the work of Jacob Leib Talmon and Isaiah Berlin. Its main purpose is to show that a combined analysis of Talmon and Berlin's biographical relationship and their individual texts demonstrates that Talmon's idea of totalitarian democracy may have had a greater influence on Berlin's notion of positive liberty than Berlin seems to have ever acknowledged. The article first summarises the intellectual and (...) biographical relationships that tied these two authors together in a personal friendship and an intellectual fellowship that lasted for more than three decades. In the second part, the insights drawn from the investigation of the authors' intellectual and biographical relationships are linked to an analysis of their texts, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy and Two Concepts of Liberty. Finally, in the third part of the article, three crucial aspects of Talmon's definition of totalitarian democracy are considered: the interpretation of the Enlightenment and Rousseau's thought, the view of the French revolution, and the possible impact each of these has on subsequent Marxist and socialist reflection, to see how they are addressed in Berlin's idea of positive liberty. (shrink)

One of the most powerful arguments against socialism consists in the claim that it is incompatible with liberty. In the works of F.A. Hayek, this argument is developed in a sophisticated and systematic manner. Hayek’s attempt to prove the incompatibility of socialism and freedom relies on a concept of liberty that derives from the tradition of classical republicanism, and bears significant resemblance to the one used by current neo-republicans. To be free means not to be ruled (...) in an arbitrary manner, not to be ruled by people, but by laws. Socialism however, Hayek claims, implies the direct and discretionary rule of bureaucrats over the whole economy, and thereby violates liberty. The paper will examine this argument in detail, illuminate its connection to republicanism, and refute it. Such a refutation will not be directed against the concept of liberty employed by Hayek; instead, it will be shown that socialism properly implemented can conform to the demands of Hayek’s liberty. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch had a lifelong interest in politics and she reflected upon the nature of ideology throughout her career. What she had to say on the subject developed during her career and relates to general academic discussions on the nature of ideology. At the outset of her career she was a committed socialist. She recognised that political ideology was in retreat after the Second World War but sought to contribute to socialist ideology. Later in her career she became sceptical of (...) radical utopian ideologies, including socialism and developed a theory of politics that prioritised safeguarding individual liberty and security. However, she imagined that political thought would continue to develop and offer new possibilities and so she did not call for the end of ideology but continued to value political ideas. (shrink)

Economic liberty is best understood in opposition to economic domination. This article develops a radical republican conception of such domination. In particular, I argue that radical republicanism provides a more satisfactory account of individual economic freedom than the market-friendly liberties of working, transacting, holding, and using championed by Nickel and Tomasi. So too, it avoids the pitfalls of other conceptions of economic liberty which emphasize real freedom, alternatives to immiserating work, or unalienated labor. The resulting theory holds that (...) economic domination occurs when someone’s access to civic capabilities is contingent on the arbitrary economic power of others. Socialist institutions—suitably configured—can deliver on this individual economic freedom, allowing the dominating power of proprietors, shareholders, landlords, and managers to be kept in check, and providing an unconditional minimum that allows individual citizens to be less beholden to others in meeting many of their most fundamental civic needs. Thus, I conclude that socialism can be championed as a politics of individual economic liberty. (shrink)

John Rawls observes that "a theory of justice is . . . a theory of the moral sentiments." His analysis of moral attitudes as defined by rationally chosen principles is controversial, however, and distinguishes his liberal conception of justice from one which understands such attitudes as constituted by verifiable beliefs about social realities. The socialist conception suggested by the latter analysis is at least as plausible as individualist alternatives.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: Rawls Against Capitalism Rawls's Critique of “Welfare State Capitalism” Rawls (and Meade) on the Aims and Features of “Property‐Owning Democracy” Putting the Democracy into Property‐Owning Democracy: POD and the Fair Value of the Political Liberties Power, Opportunity, and Control of Capital: POD and Fair Equality of Opportunity Power, Status, and Self‐Respect: POD, the Difference Principle, and the Value of Equality Welfare State Capitalism and Property‐Owning Democracy: Ideal Types, Public Policy, and Real Politics Conclusion ‐ (...) Liberty, Equality, and Property‐Owning Democracy References. (shrink)

Hayek, one of the key thinkers of the twentieth century, has also been much misunderstood. His work has crossed disciplines—economics, philosophy, and political science—as well as national boundaries. He was an early critic of Keynes and became famous in the 1940s for his warnings that the advance of collectivism in Western democracies was the road to serfdom. He was a key figure in the post-war revival of free market liberalism and achieved renewed notoriety and some political influence in the 1970s (...) and 1980s as one of the chief intellectual inspirations for the New Right in Britain and the United States.This book traces Hayek’s intellectual formation in Austrian economics and English liberalism. It analyzes the main themes of his thought such as the idea of market order, the nature of knowledge, the limits of government, and his critiques of socialism and conservatism; assesses the originality and internal coherence of his account of liberalism and modernity; and explores as his interventions in policy debates. Gamble argues that Hayek the social scientist must be disentangled from Hayek the ideologue before you can appreciate the importance and implications of some of his insights into the nature of modern societies.An excellent critical guide to one of the most influential thinkers of our times, this book will be of interest to students in politics, economics, and philosophy, as well as to all those interested in a comprehensive introduction to one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia is in large measure an ingenious elaboration of an argument for capitalism adumbrated by Plekhanov. The capitalism Nozick advocates is more pure than the one we know today. It lacks taxation for social welfare, and it permits degrees of inequality far greater than most apologists for contemporary bourgeois society would countenance. The present paper paper is only indirectly a critique of Nozick's defense of capitalism. Its immediate aim is to refute Nozick's major argument against (...) a rival of capitalism, socialism. The refutation vindicates socialism against that argument, but no one opposed to socialism on other grounds should expect to be converted by this paper. (shrink)

LTS I.1 We are adversaries, and yet the goal which we both pursue is the same. What is the common goal of economists and socialists? Is it not a society where the production of all the goods necessary to the maintenance and embellishment of life shall be as abundant as possible, and where the distribution of these same goods among those who have created them through their labour shall be as just as possible? May not our common ideal, apart from (...) all distinction of schools, be summarised in these two words: abundance and justice? LTS I.2 Such, none among you can deny, is our common goal. Only we approach this goal by different paths; you proceed along the obscure and hitherto unexplored defile of the organisation of labour, while we proceed along the broad and well known highway of liberty. Each of us is attemping to lead in train a hesitating and groping society that scans the horizon seeking, but in vain, the pillar of light that formerly guided the slaves of the Pharaohs to the Promised Land. LTS I.3 Why do you refuse to follow the path of liberty alongside us? Because, you say, this liberty which we so extol is fatal to the labourers; because it has thus far produced only the oppression of the weak by the strong; because it has give birth to disastrous crises in which millions of men have lost in some cases their fortunes and in other cases their lives; because liberty unbridled, unregulated, unlimited – is anarchy! LTS I.4 Is this not the reason that you reject liberty? is this not the reason that you demand the organisation of labour? LTS I.5 Well then, if we prove to you with sufficient clarity that all the evils which you.. (shrink)

It might surprise someone, who knew only On Liberty , to hear J. S. Mill called the father of British socialism. That would sound a careless bid for a respectable pedigree, on a par with hailing King Canute as father of the British seaside holiday. Mill is passionate there about making the individual a protected species, not to be interfered with even for his own good, unless to prevent harm to others. He is so passionate that government seems (...) at times to have no other task than to protect. The Principles of Political Economy , on the other hand, displays clear, if intermittent, socialist leanings. There too ‘there is a circle round every individual human being, which no government… ought to be permitted to overstep’ . But, subject to this constraint, government is urged to do all the utilitarian good it can and some nasty worries for democratic socialists surface instructively. They centre on the social aspects of individuality and give rise to problems in what my title calls the Social Liberty Game. British socialism, with its Lib-Lab origins and tolerant respect for individual liberty, embodies a tension between the rights of each and the good of all, which makes the Principles a living part of its intellectual history. (shrink)

Drawing on recent work in the contemporary philosophy of economics, this book presents new ideas on liberalism, including the concept of 'growth-oriented liberalism'. Since the end of the Cold War, questions and definitions of liberalism have moved from the sphere of political systems (the socialism versus liberalism debates) to the sphere of ethics (what it means to live in a liberal society). The chapters in this work trace the trajectory of the concept of liberalism in the philosophy of economics (...) by exploring the ideological implications of the methodological debate between socialism and liberalism, the idea of liberty as real freedom, the ethical implications of Max Weber's methodology on autonomy and liberty, and new typological theories of ideologies in the context of contemporary economic ethics. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on liberalism in the philosophy of economics and economic methodology, and is highly recommended for readers who seek updated ideas on liberal society in its ethical and philosophical contexts. Tsutomu Hashimoto is a Professor at Hokkaido University and the President of the Synodos Institute of International Studies in Japan. (shrink)

?Objectivity?; has been a traditional ideal for American journalism despite recent characterizations of the principle as ?biased toward the status quo, against independent thinking, and against countenancing questions of morality and responsibility.?; This article explores the role of traditional objectivity in newspaper coverage of the nomination in Alaska of a socialist commissioner of environmental conservation and the subsequent ?framing?; of public discussion. The human qualities of sensitivity to history, to civil liberties, and to questions of morality appeared in editorials, but (...) professional norms of objectivity denied reporters the right to exercise their creativity and public responsibility. Reportorial sensitivity to diverse sources is necessary, supplemented by a fundamental and far?reaching examination of how reportorial language encodes public and private questions in ways that further established positions of power and privilege. (shrink)

Idealism and ideologies -- Historical inevitability -- On human rights -- Marxism and liberty -- Marxism and ethics -- The marxist answer to the challenge of our time -- Marxist humanism -- Sartre and society -- Berdyaev, socialist and heretic -- Communism the heir to the Christian tradition.

1.- Introduction: articulating Hayek’s evolutionary argument with his socialist calculation dispute I completely agree with Bruce Caldwell (Caldwell 1988b: 74-75; Caldwell 1988a) that it is precisely within the conceptual and theoretical framework of the debate on the possibility of socialist calculation that Hayek definitively breaks with the standard static equilibrium approach to the market economy and finds out that the central problem of economics is related to the complex question of social coordination. From the Hayekian standpoint, this problem cannot be (...) solved without articulating a genuine theory about the role and the use of knowledge in society.1 This forms the hard core of what I will call the Hayekian theoretical argument. But one can find a much different kind of argument in Hayek, i.e. an evolutionary argument. I will characterize this argument as the Hayekian empirical argument. Hayek first exposed the essential elements of this genuine argument systematically in Law, Legislation and Liberty (see especially Hayek 1973). But in Hayek’s last book (Hayek 1988), socialism is still analyzed from this evolutionary standpoint , and as such socialism is considered by Hayek to be the major problem not only of economic theory but also, more globally, of Western civilization itself. In that book, published the year before the Soviet Union collapsed, Hayek showed himself to be absolutely confident that economic analysis could prove that socialism was not only a social blunder and a political failure, but above all a formidable scientific error. My reading of Hayek’s work is that this evolutionary argument has to be linked to the first one, which is of a more theoretical nature as far as economics is concerned. Indeed, while the evolutionary argument puts forward a completely different conceptual framework tightening the theoretical argument, it first of all displaces the gist of Hayek’s claim against socialism.. (shrink)

Inspired by the work of prominent University of Notre Dame political philosophers Catherine Zuckert and Michael Zuckert, this volume of essays explores the concept of natural right in the history of political philosophy. The central organizing principle of the collection is the examination of the idea of natural justice, identified in the classical period with natural right and in modernity with the concept of individual natural rights. Contributors examine the concept of natural right and rights in all the manifold and (...) interdisciplinary dimensions associated with the Zuckerts’ oeuvre. Part I explores the theme of natural right in the ancient and medieval political philosophy of Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, and St. Augustine. Part II examines the early modern break from the classical tradition in the work of Montaigne, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Locke, and Hegel as well as the legacy of the modern natural rights tradition as explored by Leo Strauss and Pope John Paul II. Part III treats the theme of natural rights from the Puritans through the Founding period in such figures as Thomas Jefferson and Gouverneur Morris and up to the Progressive era with Booker T. Washington and Theodore Roosevelt. Part IV addresses questions of natural justice in literature, including works of Euripides, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Edith Wharton, and Tom Stoppard. "In this collection compiled in honor of Catherine and Michael Zuckert, the contributors address a wonderful variety of serious issues in important literary and philosophic texts. Their topics range from Plato on piety to Stoppard on socialist utopianism, and from Aristotle and Augustine to Euripides, Locke, Hegel, Shakespeare, and Booker T. Washington. The volume stands as an impressive introduction to the liberal arts and a lively introduction to many great issues of liberalism, Christianity, justice, and liberty; it is also a tribute to the Zuckerts' breadth of study, teaching, and influence." —_Robert K. Faulkner, Boston College_. (shrink)

No apology, I imagine, is necessary for the appearance of this translation\nof Marx's "Misere de la Philosophic" On the contrary it is strange\nthat it should not have been published in England before, anu that\nthe translation of his monumental work, the "Capital," tardy as that\nwas, should have yet been made before that of a work which was originally\npublished some twenty years before "Capital" first appeared.\n\n\nIt may be that the translators and editors of the latter work were\nof opinion that in view of (...) the comprehensiveness of "Capital," a\npublication of an English edition of the "Misere de la Philosophic"\nwould be a work of supererogation. Or it may be that they thought\na book so distinctly French—as the "Capital" may be said to be distinctly\nEnglish—and which was, further, exclusively a criticism of a work\nof Proudhon's little known in England—would have slight interest\nfor English readers. On the other hand, the groundwork of the theories\nso fully elaborated in "Capital," apart from its exhaustive analysis\nof the capitalist system of production and distribution, will be\nfound in "Misere." In addition, there are several subjects—notably\nthat of rent—dealt with in this volume which are barely touched upon\nin the single book of " Capital " which has been translated into\nEnglish.\n\n\nMarx's criticism of Proudhon's theory that " the time which is necessary\nto create a commodity indicates exactly its degree of utility," so\nthat " the things of which the production costs the least time are\nthe things which are the most immediately useful," has been matched\nby H. M. Hyndman's crushing refutation of the theory of Final Utility.\nThe subject of rent, too, has been fully dealt with by the latter\nin the same book, " The Economics of Socialism," published, as the\nauthor says, in the hope of furnishing " the rapidly-increasing number\nof students of sociology with a concise and readable statement of\nthe main theories of the scientific school of political economy founded\nby Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels." Neither of these facts, however,\nnecessarily detracts from the value of this older work of Marx's.\nOn the question of rent, after reviewing the Ricardian theory and\nthe many objections which present themselves to that theory, Hyndman\nsays: " It seems, therefore, that a wider definition of the rent\nof land under capitalism is needed than that given by Ricardo, and\nthe following is suggested: — Rent of land is that portion of the\ntotal net revenue which is paid to the landlord for the use of plots\nof land after the average profit on the capital embarked in developing\nsuch land has been deducted." On the question of confiscating rent\nhe says it " would not affect the position of the working portion\nof the community unless the money so obtained were devoted to giving\nthem more amusement, to providing them with better surroundings and\nthe like. ... In fact, the attack upon competitive rents is merely\na capitalist attack. That class sees a considerable income going\noff to a set of people who take no part in the direct exploitation\nof labor; and its representatives are naturally anxious to stop this\nleakage, as they consider it, and to reduce their own taxation for\npublic purposes by appropriating rent to the service of the State.\nThat is all very well for them."\n\n\nOn this point Marx says: " We can understand such economists as Mill,\nCherbulliez, Hilditch and others, demanding that rent should be handed\nover to the State to be used for the remission of taxation. That\nis only the frank expression of the hate which the industrial capitalist\nfeels for the landed proprietor, who appears to him as a useless\nincumbrance, a superfluity in the otherwise harmonious whole of bourgeois\nproduction."\n\n\n" Rent," says Marx, " results from the social relations in which exploitation\nis carried on. It cannot result from the nature, more or less fixed,\nmore or less durable, of land. Rent proceeds from society and not\nfrom the soil."\n\n\nThe criticism of Proudhon's appreciation of gold and silver as the\nfirst manifestation of this theory of " constituted value" should\nbe interesting reading to those admirers of the French Anarchist\nwho yet profess their profound detestation of money and its function.\nSo, too, should his declaration against strikes and combinations\nof workmen. In this we see once more how extremes meet. This declaration\nof Proudhon's would not be out of place in the organ of the Liberty\nand Property Defence League.\n\n\nIn this matter of trade union combination, Marx was scarcely accurate\nin his perception of its development. He clearly did not foresee\nthat the great English trade unions would become fossilised, as it\nwere; and that instead of being a revolutionary force they would\nbecome a reactionary mass, opposing the progress of the mere proletarian\noutside their ranks, as they have done. With the spread of Socialist\nideas among them, however, their exclusive character is being modified,\nand they may even yet take that place in the revolutionary working-class\nmovement which Marx anticipated they would occupy. Given this change\nof attitude, the development must inevitably be along the lines he\npredicted. We are seeing "in face of constantly united capital, the\nmaintenance of the association [becoming] more important and necessary\nfor them than the maintenance of wages," and, further, that the combinations\nof capital are forcing the trade unions to that point where "association\ntakes a political character."\n\n\nIt is scarcely necessary to point out that in this work, written in\n1847, some words have a meaning quite other than that which they\nbear to-day. Thus, for instance, the words "Socialists" and "Socialism,"\nwhere they occur, refer to the utopians—who formulated theories of\na social system independent of the industrial evolution— and to these\ntheories themselves.\n\n\nIn most cases the numerous quotations have been verified and reproduced\nin the original. In some instances, however, they are summaries rather\nthan quotations, and appear ^is translated.\n\n\nA translation jn* necessarily an imperfect presentation of the thoughts,\nideas, and conclusions of the author. In this work I have endeavored\nto adhere as closely as possible to the form and letter, as well\nas the spirit of the original, and to this the indulgent reader is\nasked to ascribe such faults of language as would otherwise merit\nhis censure. (shrink)

Most liberals agree that governments should protect certain basic liberties, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of the person. Liberals disagree, however, about whether free market rights should also be protected. By “free market rights,” we mean those rights typically associated with laissez-faire economic systems such as freedom of contract, a right to market returns, and claims to privately own the means of production.We do not use the phrase “economic liberties,” as Tomasi does, because it does (...) not distinguish between the “economic rights” defended by classical liberal and those defended by socialists. Those on the right often see such freedoms as core liberal commitments, while those on the left argue that an economic system should be organized to protect the interests of the less advantaged members of society. If free market rights should be protected, then most existing societies are unjust. These societies fail the liberal standard in the same ways as th .. (shrink)

Trotsky wrote his Terrorism and Communism in 1920, as a response to Karl Kautsky’s book of the same title of the previous year. Trotsky’s aim was to win over, to the side of the Bolshevik view of socialism, the various European socialist political parties. Trotsky’s book is a rare document in the history of political thought. It is a candid and impassioned defense of the Bolshevik view that the period of transition to socialism is incompatible with both individual (...) liberties and democratic institutions as we normally understand them, and requires instead a one-party state with unlimited powers, prepared to use instruments of terror and repression to achieve its goals. In two articles that he wrote in the late 1930s, he elaborated on this view: he sought to provide an explicitly philosophical defense of theBolsheviks’ use of terror and repression.Trotsky’s views merit examination for several reasons: first, because they illuminate the ethical underpinnings of the distinctively Bolshevik view of socialism, and second, because they force one to come to terms with the question of how intelligent, reflective, and decent individuals could have advanced policies that strike us today as ghastly. In this paper I try to piece together Trotsky’s arguments as they bear upon both the Civil War and the immediate postwar period of reconstruction. I also examine criticisms of the policies that Trotsky was defending—criticisms that were advanced by Marxists of such disparate stripes as Kaustky, on the one hand, and Rosa Luxemburg, on the other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:David Hume and Adam Smith: A Japanese Perspective by Tatsuya SakamotoEstrella TrincadoTatsuya Sakamoto. David Hume and Adam Smith: A Japanese Perspective. London and New York: Routledge, 2021. Pp. 297. ISBN 9780367683023. Hardback. £130.This book is a collection of essays and articles by the Japanese scholar Tatsuya Sakamoto. In the foreword, Ryu Susato, professor of the Faculty of Economics at Keio University, Tokyo, notes that in Japanese society Marxism (...) has been the dogma of the history of social and economic thought. As a consequence, Japanese society has been labelled as “collectivist.” In this context, only a privileged intellectual background allowed Sakamoto to find his own way, as he graduated from Keio University and was part of its faculty. The Faculty of Economics of Keio University has spread the academic culture of liberalism that descended from Yukichi Fukuzawa (1834–1901), a reformer and founder of Keio and one of the most influential liberal thinkers in Meiji Japan (1868–1930). In addition, the family background of Sakamoto and the interest of his mother in the English language left a mark on him. Sakamoto was one of the rare Japanese scholars to study abroad in the 1980s, in particular at the University of Glasgow for two years (1984–1986) under the academic guidance of Andrew Skinner. There, he took interest in biographical and bibliographical studies. During his initial research, he found on a note by George Chalmers some evidence for David Hume’s authorship of an anonymous review of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in the Critical Review of May 1759.1 Then, along with David D. Raphael, Sakamoto transcribed the material with a commentary in the Journal of the History of Philosophy2 (Chapter 6 of the reviewed book) and he published “Hume’s Early Memoranda and the Making of His Political Economy” in Hume Studies3 (Chapter 4). There, Sakamoto gives interesting insights on Hume’s Early [End Page 163] Memoranda of manuscripts published by Mossner.4 This manuscript compilation shows the desire of Hume to pursue a systematic discourse on political economy. These efforts resulted in a large number of works published by Hume from 1748 to 1757 and even after his death, in Essays, Moral and Political, in The Natural History of Religion, and in Political Discourses.Later, Sakamoto published various articles on Hume’s economic thought in English (Chapters 1 and 5). In addition, he published his first monograph in Japanese.5 He argued that the “civilized society”—an idealization of Western societies—which was thought to be a prerequisite in Japan for the socialist revolution, concealed the different eighteenth-century historical realities of European countries in which Hume and Smith lived. Sakamoto received for this monograph the Suntory Academic Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities in 1996 and the Japan Academy Prize in 2001. In his Japanese monographs, Sakamoto interprets Hume as a firm defender of modernity and civilization, using his empiricist theory to inspire the spirit of serving the public good of a civilized society. Hume is a main character of the historiographical odyssey of the conflict between order and liberty.6 Hume tried to bridge the gap between the practical empiricism of mercantilist literature7 and the normative rationalism of natural jurisprudence,8 developing the science of economics on a philosophical foundation.After a brief leave spent at Boston University under the care of Knud Haakonssen, Sakamoto coedited a collection of essays written by Japanese scholars9 (Sakamoto’s contribution is included in Chapter 3). Another of Sakamoto’s important contributions is Chapter 9 of this book, originally published in The Adam Smith Review in 2017.10 There, we learn of Yoshihiko Uchida (1913–1983), a Japanese historian of social thought who specialized in Smith and Marx, and paid much early attention to the Smith-Rousseau connection in his The Birth of Economic Science (never published in English). As Sakamoto says, Uchida’s original view of this great Scottish philosopher, Adam Smith, proves that scholars infuse new life into classical texts, no matter how distant they may be from the object of their study in space and time. Besides, by discussing in English previous Japanese scholars’ contributions, Sakamoto is... (shrink)

W.E.B. Du Bois’s socialism has provoked debate for decades. His democratic theory and critique of political economy supports democratic socialism. In this article, I offer a philosophical reconstruction of the normative foundation of his democratic socialism in three steps. First, I argue that his philosophy of the modern democratic state supports the people’s advance of the principle of free and equal citizenship or civic equality. Next, I present his critique of the modern American welfare state, which asserts (...) the fair value of political liberty and democratic control over productive activities. Finally, I introduce the method of the excluded groups from Darkwater as an ideal procedure for guiding democratic deliberation in a profoundly nonideal public sphere. The method foregrounds the voices of excluded groups to correct asymmetrical relations of practical power and to infuse democratic reason with practical intelligence, namely, new content and values that can lead to the development of a democratic socialist state. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill is one of the very few philosophical representatives of the liberal political tradition to have given a detailed and sympathetic examination of the socialist critique of private property. While endorsing many of the extreme criticisms of the existing property system that serve as premises in arguments for socialism, Mill is definitely opposed to recommending socialism as an expedient for the present and inclined to be skeptical of the idea that at some future time socialism (...) will be the right form of social organization. Prominent among the various reasons which incline Mill to this skepticism is a concern that socialism poses a threat to individual liberty. That concern I propose to examine in this essay. (shrink)

In Rawlsian political philosophy, “basic liberties” are rights subject to a high degree of protection, such that they cannot easily be overridden for concerns of stability, efficiency, or social justice. For Rawls, something qualifies as a basic liberty if and only if bears the right relationship to our “two moral powers”: a capacity to form a sense of the good life and a capacity for a sense of justice. However, which rights are basic liberties is subject to frequent ideological (...) debate, which Rawlsian libertarians and Rawlsian socialists arguing that Rawls's own view is mistaken or incomplete. I argue that problem is that Moral Powers Test does not quite work. Only a small amount of liberty—not enough to qualify a society as liberal—can clearly be shown to pass the Moral Powers Test. One might attempt to rescue the Moral Powers Test by relaxing or modifying its requirements, but, I will argue, there appears to be no unproblematic and nonquestion‐begging way to do so. The Moral Powers Test must be abandoned or, at least, requires some unknown but radical revision or require supplements from outside Rawls's own theory. (shrink)

Rousseau is considered to be at once the most modern political thinker of the 18th century and the most ancient in his allegiance to classical republicanism. These essays address the place of liberty in his moral and political philosophy, and the origins, meaning, strength, weakness and significance of his argument.

The Art and Craft of Political Theory provides a critical overview of the discipline's core concepts and concerns and its development of critical thinking and practical judgment. The field's interdisciplinary strengths are deployed to grapple with emerging issues and engage afresh enduring ideals and quandaries. While conventional definitions of key concepts are provided, original and controversial perspectives are also explored, revealing continuity in a tradition of thought while emphasizing its diversity and innovations. The Art and Craft of Political Theory illustrates (...) the analytic and interpretive skills, the moral and philosophic discernment, and the historical knowledge needed to appreciate a tradition of thought, to contest its claims, and to make good use of its insights. Topics include: - Science, Ideology, and Normative Theory - Biology, Culture, Human Nature, Power and Violence - Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Political Thought - Liberty, Equality, Justice, Reason, and Democracy - Racial, Religious, Gender, and Economic Identities - Liberalism, Socialism, Capitalism, Communism, Anarchism, Feminism, and Environmentalism - Social Media, Automation, Artificial intelligence and other Emerging Technologies This concise, lively, and accessibly written book is essential reading for all students of political theory. (shrink)