The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century

by Helena Rosenblatt

By the time the second part of Paine’s pamphlet appeared in 1792, France’s National Assembly had passed additional reforms. A constitution had been approved in 1791. It created a limited monarchy with a unicameral assembly and gave the vote to all adult white males over twenty-five years of age who paid the equivalent of three days’ wages in direct taxes. Although women were not granted the vote, new laws legalized divorce, broadened women’s rights of inheritance, and made it possible for them to obtain financial support for illegitimate children. The Assembly also overhauled the tax system and passed laws to end feudal obstructions to the economy. It abolished guilds and dismantled internal tariffs and trading monopolies. It reduced restrictions on imports. After a major revolt in Saint-Domingue, it abolished slavery in the colonies. Looking back at this early stage of the revolution, Swiss writer Madame de Staël praised the deputies for having given France the “liberal institutions” necessary to ensure civil liberty to all.13 In so doing, she memorialized and placed her own seal of approval not only on the reforms but also on the new meaning and use of the word “liberal.”

Liberalism was forged in an effort to safeguard the achievements of the French Revolution and to protect them from the forces of extremism, whether from the right or the left, above or below. In 1795, when Constant and Madame de Staël arrived in Paris, “liberal principles” meant defending the republican government in place from counterrevolution. They meant supporting the rule of law and civil equality, constitutional and representative government, and a number of rights, primary among which were freedom of the press and freedom of religion. Beyond that, what liberal principles meant was somewhat vague and debatable.

John Stuart Mill, who was just beginning to make a name for himself during the 1820s, observed that “the libéraux comprise every shade of political opinion” from moderate to radical.

Constant believed that private property was not a natural right but merely a social convention and therefore under the jurisdiction of society. Say recognized explicitly that governments had the right to regulate any type of industry and believed that regulation was useful and proper in many circumstances. It was entirely appropriate, for example, for governments to intervene to help workers made redundant by introduction of machinery in industry. Governments could legitimately restrict the use of new machines and find work for the unemployed. “Without a doubt,” Say wrote, a government “must protect the interests of workers.”102 It was the duty of every government, Say declared, “to aim at the constant amelioration of its subjects’ condition.”

On Commercial Wealth, in which he argued for the absolute freedom of commerce and industry. But by 1819, with the publication of New Principles of Political Economy, he had changed his mind, explaining that he was obliged to modify and develop his earlier ideas because of the shocking facts that were emerging about the conditions of workers in industrializing economies—particularly England. Government, Sismondi now said, should intervene to protect the weak from the strong.

Some liberals said that government programs to help the poor bred laziness. Raising wages or reforming conditions of work would not improve anything but just inhibit the development of the values and habits that workers needed to acquire. The problem, it was often said, was that workers were indolent and degenerate; they spent their money on alcohol and prostitutes rather than on their homes and families. Intervention by the state should therefore be avoided as much as possible. It would simply exacerbate the situation and might also encourage workers to think that they could demand aid as a right. The truth, moreover, is that the liberals in power did intervene in the economy, but it did so selectively and in ways that favored themselves and their class. They supported employers against workers, repeatedly sending out troops to suppress strikes and demonstrations. They imposed censorship on their critics, and persecuted and exiled political adversaries. They imposed taxes that hit the poor disproportionately hard and maintained a high tariff regime that favored wealthy producers and landowners. The only nominally social law passed by the July Monarchy was an 1841 prohibition on the labor of children under eight years of age and the employment of children younger than thirteen for nighttime work. The law, however, was routinely flouted.

It was in this context that the word “socialist” was introduced and disseminated. Originally, the term described anyone who sympathized with the plight of the working poor. Marxism was still many years away, and at the time there was no necessary contradiction between being liberal and being socialist. The word seems to have come from England, where it was associated with the wealthy industrialist and reformer Robert Owen. As early as 1815, Owen was writing about a new “social system” that he hoped would replace the current system that was causing such hardship for the poor.

A few years later, in the second volume of Democracy in America (1840), Tocqueville called for increased state intervention to help the poor. Private charity was not enough, he now declared; “public charity” was necessary. He worried about the emergence of an “industrial aristocracy.” Factory owners were growing ever richer, more powerful, and more arrogant while the workers became increasingly demoralized and dehumanized. “This man resembles more and more the administrator of a vast empire,” he wrote, “that man a brute.” Because of the painful effects of industrialization and the division of labor, Tocqueville now concluded that workers required “the special consideration of the legislator.” The government needed to address endemic problems such as “the helplessness of infancy, the decrepitude of old age, sickness, insanity,” and it should furnish aid “in times of public calamities.” “It is at once necessary and desirable,” said Tocqueville, “that the central power that directs a democratic people be active and powerful. There is no question of rendering it weak or indolent, but only of preventing it from abusing its agility and force.”