Introduction | Communism | Liberalism
Fascism and Nazism | Zionism
Existentialism | Did you know? | Find out more

Liberalism

Unlike the Communist states, which came about through revolutions carried out by groups of idealistic militants (who had often studied Marxist texts with a near religious fervour), the Western capitalist nations claimed to be the products of a natural evolution of human nature rather than a result of ideology and social engineering.

Still, the ideas that lie behind capitalist democracies can be found in various 18th- and 19th-century texts, such as economist Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) and philosopher John Stuart Mill's On Liberty (1858) and Utilitarianism (1863). Increasingly, during the 20th century, the new academic disciplines of sociology, politics and economics – led by thinkers such as Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, J M Keynes and J K Galbraith – aimed to explain what was happening in Western society.

'Free' and 'unfree'

Western leaders were keen to stress that the capitalist system was equivalent to the 'free' West as opposed to the 'unfree' Communist East. However, the systems of government common in Europe and the United States after World War II were best described as 'liberal democracies'.

They were liberal in that they did not attempt to control thought and action to the same extent as the Communist regimes. They were democratic in that the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government were theoretically separate from each other and so acted as checks on each other, and most of these governments depended for their legitimacy on an electoral mandate.

Temporary freedoms

From the start of the century, however, many academic and political critics pointed out that the cherished freedoms of the West were at best temporary and at worst illusory. Whenever democratic Western societies encountered unusual stresses or strains – for example, Germany in the early 1930s suffering economic collapse during the Great Depression, or the US during the anti-Communist hysteria whipped up by Senator Joe McCarthy at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s – their leaders were quick to curb civil rights and act in an authoritarian way similar to that of their Communist enemies (although never to such a totalitarian extent).

And, as the various liberation movements were quick to point out, the liberal freedoms of Western capitalist society were often denied to groups such as women, poorly paid workers, blacks, gays and others who were marginalised because of their gender, ethnicity, poverty or sexual preferences.

Welfare

At its best, Western society accepted some of the social democratic ideas that came from left-wing, mildly Marxist criticism of society, and introduced practical schemes to alleviate the worst excesses of the capitalist system. Called 'welfare', such schemes included state provision of unemployment benefit and pensions, as well as medical care and education free at the point of delivery.

In Britain, the Liberal government of 1906-12, much influenced by the example of 19th-century Germany, pioneered such reforms. Then, after the 1942 Beveridge Report proposed a comprehensive social insurance scheme 'from the cradle to the grave', the welfare state was formed after World War II. During the course of the 20th century, other schemes spread throughout the liberal democracies, with the example of Scandinavia being particularly positive.

Neo-liberalism

Towards the end of the century, the introduction of neo-liberal ideas in advanced capitalist countries such as the US and Britain – based on the theories of right-wing economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman – signalled a more aggressive capitalist phase, which saw workers' rights and social welfare schemes under attack in many liberal democracies. In the tensions between social democracy and exploitative capitalism, there is no resting place.

Top